Road Trip Day 2
2006 Road Trip Vacation – 2006-09-24
- Well it’s Sunday, September 24, 2006 and I slept pretty well actually, hit the snooze, caught a couple of extra hours of sleep – haven’t looked outside yet… (pulls shades open)… oh, great… cloudy. Took a shower – piss poor water pressure… mold behind the handle, but that’s cool… got myself cleaned… and the towels… they’re so rough I could actually use them to sand the calluses off my feet.. but anyway, gonna check the weathermap and get out of here!
- So I go to check out and the first thing I do is get a cup of coffee, which I don’t usually do, not much of a coffee drinker… but short of diet Pepsi, this will be my boost. I look at the cup and there’s no tab to lift and drink from… the girl behind the counter sees my puzzled look and I explain the situation which causes her to look herself and laugh – she’d never noticed before…
- Heading south toward some signs that say Knox historical site, so I don’t even know what road this is, and frankly I don’t care… I’m going past the knox county fairgrounds… and yeah, that thing about small town gas stations being unreliable… I stopped by one BP station and it was dead… closed… abandoned…
- Looks like this is 150 west and I’m going past some place called a Dick Blick outlet store…. I think I’d change my name
- Of course carl sandberg is the uncle of ryan sandberg, right? ;-p
- So this building in
- 150 must have angled north and because I don’t want to go that direction I got on 34 west which is taking me past some penitentiary complete with cons dressed in blue in the yard and guards in the tower!
- As I go a little bit West I’m seeing farmers already are harvesting corn… combines and wagons in the fields – I didn’t see this closer to home…
- This is my kind of town…. . Good Hope…. Population 400 and my goodness, the houses look like… uh… ramshackles
- I guess the hope wasn’t so good after all
- It’s about 10:49 and I’m just coming through McComb
- I could have gone south or west, and I decided to take 136 west to
- So. I’m in Colchester Illinois home of Lake Argyle state park apparently… and I’m gonna go see the park because it had a sign with a pair of binoculars on it, which means there’s either something to see, or a pair of binoculars out there… and besides, I really gotta pee!
- The entrance to the park is lined with these 40’ tall austrain pines… just beautiful, I bet they hold a lot of cool birds… owls… who knows what!
- This is a really pretty park – it would be nice to bring the boat down here sometime… trees are just starting to change… it’s really hilly with the lake surrounded by forest… pines and who knows what else… really pretty park
- 11:40 about 10 minutes outside of somewhere I saw a lot of turkey vultures flying around circling – dead raccoons in the middle of the road so I bet they were waiting to get those… cool
- So I found the jail… it’s a historic site now preserved by the LDS church – tourist info place across the street – it’s a limestone block building and pretty well maintained… lots of joseph smith propaganda outside, but of course even though I have roots tied to this place and old RLDS, I think it’s a bunch of #*#@!&#, but whatever, it’s still cool and historic and family related. I met this nice older guy from
- I stopped at this park along the road to Nauvoo… as soon as I got out of the car I saw this man, woman and kid staring at something on the ground…. I couldn’t see what it was, but as I got out of the car, I saw that it was a kitten… the woman told me that they’d spotted it here and fed it some crumbled cheese nips (only thing they had)… how it was starving and snarfed up the nips… It was a pretty young cat, and there were houses across the road, but odds are that it was dumped there either alone or as a litter…. I tried to catch it with no success… I helped the man figure out exactly where we were and he tried calling around to find an animal shelter to take it too, but none were open. We tried to catch it again, but it was too afraid and quick. I suggested we cut the bottom off a plastic bottle (which they fortunately had) of water and we left the kitty with a pile of cheese nips and clean water. It’s not ideal, but the cat is better off than he was before we came along. Sometimes nature has to run its course. The people were from the
- Before I left the park I was able to snap some shots of a praying mantis that had made temporary stalking grounds on my tire, the river and a barge… the water lilly pads were huge! I have a shot of a duck standing on one.
- I bagged the idea of going to Nauvoo after the rest area stop and I’m heading back south following this national historic route…
- According to the bank sign in
- Well so far I’m not seeing what the attraction of this national roadway is… it’s not bad, but it’s kinda boring… 96 south… gonna see what I can do to get closer to the river again
- Like I said I had enough of 96 south so I’m taking a random road west – opposite direction of Tioga
- I’m going back south again, although I think I’m gonna turn around as I saw a turkey vulture nibbling on a squirrel… I think I’m on 480 something or other
- The pix where the vultures were flying is out over this huge valley area… I gotta believe this is part of the
- I’m driving down this thing, whatever it is… and there’s this big valley to the right of me, and a huge levee to the left of me… hmmmm
- I just turned off on another non descript road in my effort to head west and get closer to the river
- I can’t get over the number of vultures out here… I guess I shouldn’t be surprised with the amount of road-kill but I don’t remember seeing them when I was a kid
- Well this is kind of unexpected… my western route has come to an abrupt stop… the road kind of dead ends into the Mississippi river in what seems to be a ferry boat crossing… with the boat crossing to the other side currently so I’m gonna take some pix and wait for the ferry
- I’ve never ridden a ferry before so this ought to be interesting… I have a ferry mate that just pulled up behind me… they look like kids, but who can tell anymore… a sweatshirt clad arm is dangling from the rear seat window flicking cigarette ashes… it’s hard to judge how wide the river is at this point, and it looks like the ferry is returning to this side – a sign said to flash the headlights for service, so I obliged… I have no idea how this works… I can only guess that it costs something to use…
- All right now this is getting really interesting as there’s a big friggin Mac semi-truck behind me and the other car… can anyone say full-up ferry?
- So here we go… this is pretty freaky… $5 one way - $8 round trip… didn’t expect to be doing this, but hey, I’m on vacation!
- So it turns out I’m going to be just north of Quincy, actually Lagrange, this toll ferry is past a town called
- That was kind of cool, I’m sitting here blathering into the recorder and the kid in the other car next to me starts talking, asking where I’m going, telling me about he and his wife and 9 month old baby were going to see his mom and comes through here all the time… the boat was really loud, so I couldn’t here everything he was saying, but I nodded affirmations anyway – buh!
- So this thing was called the canton ferry river access on lock and dam number 20… so I’m in
- Stopped to get gassed (fuel)…a little over 8 gallons on about 230 miles – gas is $2.10 for regular unleaded… are you hearing this
- When I got gas I picked up a bag of Planters Trail Mix, nuts and chocolate – probably will be lunch for me
- I’m on 61 south which says
- My opportunity to go back to
- Back in
- I saw a sign for like an old stone bridge, one of those park signs right? So I go down the road and the old stone bridge doesn’t look that old, so I turn left to enter a park in Quincy and lining the park are these funky apartments (dead deer by the road) and I get around through the park on the one way street (can’t turn around) and when I get out on the other side I see it’s the friggin Quincy Public Housing Authority… so all along the park is low income housing… how do you like that! God Bless
- Getting back onto 57 south again
- Well my hwy 57 dead ended so I’m looking at getting on I guess Route 96?
- Entering Kinderhook, population… next to nothing…
- And even Kinderhook has skaters/Goths… I’m driving through and these two black clad, goth/skater girls were along the street, and as I had my window down they yelled “Have a nice day!”…. bizarre? Not in small town
- Now entering new canton, population 450… hoping they have a convenience store… no surprise I have to pee… and I’m getting to have a bit of a headache.. dunno if it’s the cigarettes, diet pepsi, driving, meh… so I’ll get some water too.
- Nothing to stop at so I’m still heading south… saw a couple of live, not road-kill deer along side the road so that was cool
- Getting the urge to hit some gravel roads, but I’m kind of thinking it would be a good idea to have a compass before I do something like that, but …. We’ll see…
- A town must be awfully small not to get it’s population on the sign…. Rockport didn’t have it and neither does the town I’m going through now, Atlas…
- I’m supplementing my bag of nuts with a pack of “beef steak nuggets” which frankly looks more like dog food than people food, but I’m thinking it’s probably better for me than a quarter pounder with cheese…
- I got on to 100 from 96 and I see another pair of binoculars so I’m going to see what they think is scenic and take pix of it…
- Turns out the binoculars are for this park… looks like a family may have started it, called the McCully Heritage Project, it’s sponsored by a bunch of county, state and federal agencies though… it’s pretty out here… I walked out on the raised walkway that they have for most protected wetlands, a little creepy that the bridge swayed side-to-side as I walked, but it was nice… crows cawing, frogs chirping, a pheasant cackle… redbirds… really nice and pretty
- This stretch of road I’m on is really hilly, lots of tree filled hills, water to the left, water to the right… various rivers and tributaries of the
- The
- I’m struck by the winding road along the
- Well coming into Alton, I suppose this is about 5-10 miles north heading south… the river is pretty wide here… on my left are about 100’ limestone cliffs tree lined along the front and on my right is the river… this is pretty cool
- 100 in Alton turned to 143 south so I’m a little concerned about sliding into east St Louis by accident so I’m just gonna stick to the signs that say great river road and see where that takes me
- I just saw a bald eagle sitting on a branch in the trees of this backwater, but of course there’s nowhere to turn off and get pix L
- The signs are leading me toward route 3,
- There’s virtually no traffic on this road as I’m heading into
- I’m still following 3, not sure what to think about that… crossed some bridges and saw the arch, took photos through the window – seems like I went into
- Just passed Monsanto drive and a big assed billboard celebrating the “sisters of sin” performing nightly… there was a line of … well… people wrapped around the building and no, I didn’t stop!
- Looking like I got what I wanted… I expected there to be a lot more city than what I went through… barely a blink of an eye and I’m out… I guess I’m just used to being around
- So another decision point… to go to Memphis/Tulsa or stay south on 3…. I have no idea…
- I took 3 in my effort to avoid the interstates,
- Just saw a sign for the walk for Lupus which makes me think of a friend in O’Fallon, MO
- Getting a little tired – wondering if I shouldn’t be looking for a place to call home for the night, relax, get something good, not fast food, relax, pop open the wine :-D
- I got a room at the best western in Chester, IL, Internet Access, $69/night… about to get some grub at a smorgasbord… parking lots full, so it must be good – wish me luck!
- So my son called me… and that was pretty cool – he’s a good boy, even though I think his motives were to ask about his new computer, he first asked how the trip was going and were I was. That was nice… made me happy.
- And no, I do not use the funky bed spreads!
No comments:
Post a Comment