A great app!


 We are not sure what we would have done without our Great River Road App.  We have good old maps, an I-phone GPS and various brochures but the app has kept us on the road.

We have had poor phone service since we left northern Illinois and thus you have not had a posting in several days.  This does not mean we are not here just not able to blog.  Pan will attempt to catch you up on our roamings a bit at a time.

In the last blog we noted that we had success in finding a camp site for last Saturday night.  Sunday night and Monday night we found places in municipal campgrounds.  One was adjacent to a golf course and the other on the fairgrounds of the local fair.  In both cases we were almost alone.  

Pan has been unable to get photos from her I-phone to her I-pad and apologizes for too many words in this blog.  But we did have a wonderful campfire at the first stop.  If the pictures ever migrate to the right devise Pan will forward them later.

As we followed the River down the border between Illinois, Iowa and Missouri we travel through lots of corn or soybean fields.  Apparently these two crops are rotated to encourage the earth to continue being plentiful.  

We stopped at Samual Clements’ hometown of Hannibal. Mo. We discovered our second open Great River information center and museum.  It was at a Corp of Engineers dam and lock.  As we had found in Hannibal, there are not too many folks out and about even though this is about to be the peak color season. This fact has the shop and museum workers lonely for conversation. They were replacing a gate next to the museum, in the lock, that had been damaged by a loose barge.  

The locks and dams on the Mississippi are supported with gas tax on River vehicles. Which means you can kayak or canoe through the system for free. Also the River changes from southern Illinois down and does not need locks.  The dams creat the level large pools that allow the boats to safely navigate the River from lock to lock.  That is your science lesson for today.

On Monday we stopped off at the Pere Marquette State Park, that is one of the parks enriched by the Civilian Conservation Corp as have many of Illinois’s parks.  Saw a wonderful video about the CCC but was unable to camp there as the campground was closed.  I guess we need the CCC again. Next stop the Arch and St. Louis but that will be for next time and maybe the pictures will cooperate by then. 

Just some previous pics to entertain.  Stay well.



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