Road Trip Day 3
2006 Road Trip Vacation – 2006-09-25
- It’s Monday 9/25, and the weather is awesome! The sky’s clear and it’s a little chilly this morning… I woke up early, rested, and the girl at the check out desk said the one thing I needed to see in
- Another landmark that she said was here if I wanted to check out where the tornado damage… I’m not sure how appropriate that is, and I didn’t realize that it had been that close to here… I don’t know that I want to see that
- Well the Popeye statue is a Popeye statue. It’s not a big statue, nor a big park, but if it draws, it draws… It’s a beautiful view… lots of birds and a terrific view overlooking the river, so it’s all good…
- The plan is to head on 3 toward Cairo and see what distracts me… haven’t decided if I’m going to follow the river road – distracted by the notion of going to Missouri or Tennessee/Alabama – I could always go to the Gulf of Mexico via the river road and swing through Missouri or Tennessee on my way back home…
- The first hill that I’ve been on that has a runaway truck ramp since I’ve left home, so this is good news to me! It means hilly terrain ahead!
- Here’s a sign pointing west off of 3 that says national river road or something or other, but it looks to be taking me north, so I think I’m going to have to turn around again
- 3 south of Chester is quite a bit different view than north of Chester where before it was a pretty open valley and I couldn’t see much of the river, but now I’m driving relatively high up the side of the bluff and looking down to the right is my river and this is pretty cool terrain…. I really like this
- I’m coming into Rockwood which is one of the cities that was hit by the tornado, so I hope I’m not diverted by anything through here…
- I’m kinda surprised a tornado would hit Rockwood as hilly and rugged as it is… I would think it would need more of an open and flat space to run, but maybe there’s some flat stuff up ahead?
- Ah… here we go… not more than 2 minutes after I said that the landscape opens up wide and gets really flat… looks like another river valley/basin…
- Saw a sign for piney creek ravine nature preserve so I’m going to go check that out…
- Hog Hill is the name of the road leading into Piney Creek Ravine…. Who comes up with these names?
- I feel like I should be leaving a trail of bread crumbs as I make my way to this ravine… a series of twists and turns and winds and the signs get smaller as the road continues… it said 7 miles but it’s not a straight 7 miles – this is no grid pattern with straight roads like home lol – I don’t think there’s a quarter mile of straight road here…
- Starting to have my doubts of the existence of this piney creek ravine
- And the pavement just ended and turned into gravel!
- So I found piney creek ravine nature preserve – claims to be the largest collection of prehistoric rock art in
- So piney creek appears to be nothing more than a trickle now, but interestingly it’s carved itself through the rock and has a completely smooth rock bed, not pebbles or gravel but rock carved right out of the hillside… cool
- This really had to be something to see when there was water running through it… there’s a number of steep declines carved from the rock that would have made really impressive waterfalls
- Evidently what I walked across before is a tributary to piney creek as part of this trail has me crossing a larger creek… and I’m doing this by walking across stones trying not to get wet… I hope this is worth it…
- Actually the journey is worth the effort – I really don’t care what the stone art looks like
- This is definitely a different terrain – primeval like – feels like I’m intruding on someone’s domain here
- Well – I see a lot of markings… but they are markings throughout modern history, June 12, 1904 maybe? And beyond that… I couldn’t tell you what is hyroglyphs and what isn’t and I’ve been looking and looking and I can’t identify one this, so I’m not sure what to think
- Well the artwork was a bust but the hike was pretty cool with the rock formations… these might be called Dells around us, and the place is rotten with butterflies – they’re all over the place…
- I could be upset about the graffiti on the walls…. Hold on…
- Some I’m sitting here talking and a couple of wild turkeys start walking by me so I had to stop and take some pix of that of course… but what I was saying was I guess I could be upset about the graffiti on the carvings, and on one hand it seems like it’s destruction of history, but on the other hand it’s people doing what people do… 1500 years ago that’s what they were doing… graffiti on the wall so I kinda feel like it’s people doing what people do, leaving their mark saying that they were here… I wouldn’t be surprised if 1000-1500 years from now our graffiti is in some historic exhibit as historic art…. I would have liked to have seen the rock art, but maybe I didn’t walk far enough, or is it really art if you need a sign saying “Here’s the art?”
- The other thing I’m hoping is that I can find my way out of here… hoping to find my way out by following the signs in reverse order if I can spot them
- I’m back on 3 south… great river road… finding myself behind a couple of Harley’s and all’s good!
- I’m seeing a lot of broken trees, and signs, and snapped off tops so I’m thinking that this must be where the storms hit… wow, there’s a lot of busted up trees here…
- A lot of trees are uprooted in peoples yards but the homes seemed to have survived which is a miracle and a blessing
- There are some beautiful horse farms down here with awesome horses on them…
- It’s kinda exciting seeing the names of these cities I’ve read about in Civil war history and I’m a little jacked at the thought of seeing these places…
- I just saw another brown sign with little grand canyon 12 miles, so I’m gonna see what that is…
- … a field of goats…
- I must be driving along hickory ridge… hickory ridge greenhouse, hickory ridge this, hickory ridge that… c’mon get some imagination here!
- I have some shots of turkey vultures… trying to figure out if I like my lens or not… seems to be a bit fuzzy at long distances…
- I starting to think that maybe I zigged when I should have zagged… no little grand canyon yet…. Wait… what’s this… uh… oh, I don’t know what I’m doing…
- Yep – I was going the wrong way so I gotta turn around… (grumble) and here I go!
- It says it’s six miles and I’m on something called the wine trail – I did see a winery and vines… here’s mt pleasant Jerusalem Christian church…
- By the way this is a really twisty gravelly road through some really thick forest – I’m gonna stop and take a shot…
- There are some nice horse farms here.. there’s a lot of trailer homes here too… looks like people just dumped whatever rust bucket they could get on a lot… there are some lots for sale, so I suppose if your ok with that kind of thing it would be too bad…
- I don’t know what it is about people and dumping animals… you’ll see in my pix 2 little dogs that had been dumped there – and as I got out of my car there was a guy letting out a coon he’d cought in his barn and that it was sleeping, but I dunno, I dunno – I could see it breathing, but usually a coon would go nuts caged.. so I dunno… but the damn dogs, I couldn’t get them in my car… I could get one, but not the other… just frickin sick about it… so I’m hoping that the guy will pick them up and take them into the towns shelter… he said he’s done it…. I couldn’t get them in the car and had no cell reception…. Just makes me sick… they looked like really nice dogs, and one was f’ing emaciated… dammit…. So I’m trying to get out of this place… screw the little grand canyon…
- I swear there’s no frickin regard for animals out here… I just passed what looked like some boxer mix hobbling in the middle of the damn road! G*D
- I’m on some road… dunno what it is or what direction I’m going… my guess is south by the sun…
- (I put a CD of the Demones in)
- Checking out this town called
- Well it turns out that I’m on 127 south – of
- And oh yeah... I used a ton of baby wipes after being anywhere near the dogs….
- On 146 going west… headed toward where?
- Back into
- I think I missed it somehow… the interesting thing about Cape Girardeau is that they have this giant concrete wall built between downtown and the river… but it has walkways through it… what’s the point of that?
- I had lunch… in Cape Girardeau at this little family sports pub… it looked like a college hangout with pool tables and video games… good cheese burger… nice bartender… he’s from poplar creek MO, but his inlaws live in Darien and he’s been to Downers Grove (close to me) a bunch of times… at O’Reily’s pub… small world
- I bought gas here too… $1.99/gallon
- So I went back across the bridge to take
- I just went through
- Welcome to
- What happened to my river road signs? They just disappeared and I had to make a turning choice… so I’m gonna be looking for them…
- Right now I’m on 51 south…. Looks like the lumber industry is alive and well down here… and there's nothing stinkier than a paper mill - LAWDY!
- Well I like choices, so there’s a sign for alternate river road, 1203, so that’s what I’m on… looks much less traveled…
- Allright, I’m on 123 south now…
- One of the things I’m wondering about this great river road is where’s the river… seems like most of the time I’m on it there’s no river…. DOGS! Dang… there’s a whole pack of labradores walking down the road…
- I stopped in this little minimart – actually minimart café – reminds me of me of Farlin Iowa where I was related to everyone in town… it was really a place to hang out – they did sell things, but it was a place for the family to eat Sunday breakfast… and there are dogs roaming all over the streets here… craziness…
- This place I stopped was
- And so here I sit – water over the road – which is going to take me way out of the way – so now I have to go to some friggin place called Clinton friggin Kentucky… and there’s water all over the place uh… and this is actually one of my nightmares to get swept away in flood water in a car… and this looks a lot like the scene from my dreams so I’m not even going to tempt fate, so I’m going back and heading to Clinton…
- I’m cutting off of whatever I was on to 1300 east…hopefully this will hook up with 58 south to Clinton and I can get back on track…
- There are piles of crap everywhere – the whole area looks like it was under water the last few days.
- Bingo! 58…
- Yeh – that’s what’s going on… everything is unbelievably flooded here… it’s amazing actually
- I’m on 51 south…
- A little rundown beer place north of
- The great state of
- And interestingly enough I think I missed my turn to
- Not a problem… got my self turned around and back on track to
- Rock on speed limit here is 70 MPH
- Tennessee looks a hell off a lot different than KY… cripes TN looks more like Iowa here… some hills… up and down, but pretty flat, at least the part I’m in now…
- I’m 184 south out of
- One of the things I’m noticing here is that it doesn’t seem that friendly – nobody waves or says hi or waves… nobody makes eye contact – is it me or is it how it is here?
- The houses at least in this part of TN are in a lot better shape than what I saw in KY – lawns are well manicured… houses maintained – completely different economy here…
- I taking 21 west out of troy – nice place
- I just got welcomed to Hornbeak – but I don’t see it… where is Hornbeak!
- Oh – here it is… another seemingly small town… not bad though…
- Actually hornbeak was a lot larger than I’d expected… length wise – lots of hills and curves have popped up from nowhere…
- I saw my 1st cotton fields as the sun was going down which was really cool but I didn’t have a chance to shoot them – hope to do that tomorrow… need to find a place to call home tonight…
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