Denise woke up early in IL and after a quick breakfast, we headed out towards St. Louis on I-64. All the cropland seemed very prosperous – lots and lots of corn and wheat. There is plenty of tree cover between fields – all hardwood. The pines disappeared.
St. Louis was a bigger city than either of us anticipated and, unfortunately, we timed our arrival to coincide with rush hour. Thankfully Catherine felt right at home with 4-6 lanes of traffic flowing in each direction.
We crossed the Missouri (a rather large and full river) and got some good views of the arch. Since we were creeping at 5-10, the pictures were easier to take.
Suddenly we were in Missouri.
As soon as we crossed the river, we picked up I-70 to head across the state. This took us within a few hundred feet of the arch, through downtown (next to what Catherine assumes was whoever sponsors the Cardinal’s stadium), and passed all the abandoned buildings. Some cities have run down or low income areas. St. Louis is the only place we’ve ever been with DEAD areas. According to Tom, St. Louis was legally unable to annex (or tax) it’s suburbs and simply collapsed under its own weight.
His theory does make some sense though. The suburbs of St. Louis go forever – it seemed like we were in the city for well over an hour after we got up to speed. The other striking thing was before you crossed the bridge, the vast majority of the license plates were from IL (including one sporting Mr. Wuf), but on the other side of the river, the vast majority of tags were from MO.
In any case, we started through Missouri’s rolling corn fields.
And kept rolling and rolling and rolling with the only thing note being 1 deer…. Eventually Denise decided she’d seen enough interstate and we turned off onto MO 63 heading north. There was no traffic and the road still ran at 70+, so it was a good call. Is anyone familiar with the Missouri highway system? Why are so many of the roads named with one letter? Catherine thinks she saw at least 4 separate N roads. As far as we can tell, these roads are only marked with letters – no road names. Anyone know about this convention?
Denise took over driving and we eventually turned west on MO 36. We saw a marker for the Locus Creek Covered Bridge State Historical Site which was 1.5 miles down a dirt road. Who could pass up such a landmark??
Obviously not us. Catherine isn’t sure this site gets 1 visitor a day, but whatever… After getting to the deserted parking lot, we discovered the place is aptly named. The roar of the cicadas was deafening -- they even would crescendo synchronously. Then we walked about a quarter mile to the bridge. This bridge was part of the first transcontinental road (Route 8) and was a toll bridge. 3 cents per person, 1.5 cents per live head of sheep, calves etc. and 9 cents per head of horned cattle. In the 1940s, the state stopped maintaining the road and at some point locust creek got diverted about a quarter mile away, but the bridge still stands.
We snapped a few pictures of the scenery around the bridge – the dust is from a tractor that followed us out onto the dirt road.
We finally found I-29 and headed north. Someone forgot to tell Catherine that Missouri is a REALLY big state. I-29 runs within a few miles of the Missouri river. The interstate is the flood plain which is maybe 5-10 miles wide with bluffs on both sides. The entire flood plain is covered in corn.
Finally we crossed the border into Iowa.
Iowa also grows corn. As far as we can tell, it has no other industry or source of income. This is not a bad picture IA (and MO and NE) is covered a gross haze that makes LA look clear most days. The Missouri river is well over flood stage (in fact there is concern that I-29 will be closed to flooding in the next few days). We saw evidence of the floods.
There were plenty of new levees being bulldozed right beside all the permanent irrigation equipment. Iowa also has a bit of modern art to spice up the fields.
The wind was blowing the car a bit as we crossed the Missouri again.
This time, we found ourselves in Nebraska.
Contrary to popular belief, Nebraska is NOT flat. It has lots and lots of rolling hills. And corn. Lots of corn. It’s currently a few inches high.
After a few hours, we found where the corn goes--to feed lots. This is a small bit of one.
As we passed Norfolk, we started to find more cow pastures (mostly black angus with cute little babies) and hay fields. We finally made it to O’Neill, population almost 4,000. It’s the largest Irish city in Nebraska (founded by General O’Neill in the mid 1800s). According to the young Indian gentleman working at the front desk of the Holiday Inn Express we’re staying at, lots of ranchers come to O’Neill to conduct business and they also get a few travelers like us. The poor guy grew up in large cities in India, moved to New York and then Holiday Inn transferred him here. Catherine said “culture shock” and he smiled graciously and said something about enjoying the new experience and being rather shocked when Google said there was nothing around here. Catherine wonders what he did to anger his boss J. Well, it’s now after 10pm and finally dark, so we should head to bed. Maybe we’ll finally get to South Dakota tomorrow!
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