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Published: August 20th 2017
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We left Omaha this morning at 7:40 AM and 63 degrees. (The temperatures actually got up to 93 before the day was through.) The goal was to reach the Mississippi River Byway in Fetus, MO by the end of the day. Festus is a small town of 11,000 just a few miles south of St. Louis. We made it, but it was a struggle. I was very tired today and had some difficulty being attentive. In fact, I will confess that I almost nodded off a few times, which is very unusual for me. It wasn’t so much the drive as it was a lack of sleep. Last night we had a room in a hotel where there were long-term residents and it reminded me of a college dorm. They were socializing in the hallway and leaving their doors open and walking from room to room. So it was noisy. After falling asleep, we were awakened at 12:30 AM by people talking outside our door. Around 2:30 AM someone was banging on someone’s door. And to add to this, our climate control was not allowing me to control it. It had a mind of it’s own and in the middle of
the night I could not even get it to respond to anything, so the temperature in our room was not ideal. So…those are my excuses and that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
We left Omaha and crossed over the Missouri River into Iowa and drove south on the east side of the river. But before that, we circled the city of Omaha and saw a lot of industry and a lot of grain mills and grain elevators, some looking to be old and abandoned and others, which were enormous, looked to be still in operation. Well…given all of the corn fields and soybean fields we saw today, it stands to reason that all of those crops have to go somewhere to be processed. We saw a huge plume of smoke in the air and felt confident it was not what we have been looking at throughout this trip. It came from what appeared to be a power plant. They had 12 chimneys all in a row spewing out white smoke, and alongside this plant was a long string of oil tanker railroad cars. Guess we could tell what they were burning over there in that plant.
We followed the Missouri River all day. The Missouri River is the longest river in North America. It is born in the Rocky Mountains of western Montana and runs 2,341 miles across the country through Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri and finds it’s end just north of St. Louis where it flows into the Mississippi River. We crossed it four times today, in Omaha, in Kansas City, in Rocheport, MO, and in Jefferson City, MO where we left it and headed south as it meandered northeast to find its end.
Around 3 PM we met up with the Mississippi River just south of St. Louis and spent the next hour making valiant attempts to find access to view the river. Unfortunately, as we learned, the scenic highway does not run beside the river as it often did further north and we found ourselves on dead-end roads, in industrial parks and in residential neighborhoods where no one seemed to care about being close to the river. The one bright spot was the Anheuser Memorial Museum, which we fell upon totally by accident. It is a wonderful mansion beside the river and is open one day
a week (not today) for tourists to visit. The minute I opened the car door I smelled horses and there were several grazing in a pen beside a barn. We stopped to take photos and then went on our way. This mansion belongs to the grandson of the founder of Anheuser Brewing.
We found our way to our hotel where we refined our travel plans, had dinner and settled in for the night. Tomorrow, we will try again to see more of the river as we make our way down to Memphis.
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Kelli kernkamp
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Rollin on the River!
Well not exactly, but a couple of big ones to write about. Hope you sleep better tonite and ready for another big day. I can't wait!