Missouri

---

We spent much of the day in Cape Girardeau. It is a Mississippi River town that thrived in the days of the steamboat and has a tourist industry based in part on nostalgia for that time. The waterfront area has on "olde tyme" feel to it and there are murals on the flood wall, but there is also a modern bridge that crosses the Mississippi River here. We visited a little museum with a well-done and succinct natural history of SE Missouri. We left "Cape", as the natives call it, and drove north following the big river. We passed through a section of Illinois that is now attached to Missouri because the river altered its course since the two became states. We stopped in Ste. Genevieve, site of an early French settlement and a gorgeous - and big - Catholic Church. We walked around the town including the tourist center where there is information about the Great River Road - a collection of smaller highways that follow the length of the Mississippi River for its entire length. And now we are in St. Louis for the night. We plan to explore the city this weekend and we are hopeful that the Cardinal baseball playoff game(s) will not interfere with our sightseeing!

---