On Saturday morning I was due to meet up with another forum contact, Ollie Patterson, at a car show held regularly at the Jackson Veteran's Home. But I had no idea how far I would get that afternoon. My plan was to leave Jackson and then cross Louisiana and go into Texas for a little way, then heading North towards my Sunday destination, Oklahoma City. Here it is on the map:




But the opening gambit for the morning was to join in with a bunch of old blokes at one of the McDonalds in McComb for breakfast. This was probably the first time I'd done this, but it was to become almost a regular day-starter for me on my trips.

Macca's in the US have a very nice breakfast option, a cup of oatmeal and fruit. It was priced at around $2, sometimes a bit less, and with a coffee added it made a decent opening meal for the day. On buying this, I often turned and looked to see what corner the 'old guys' were meeting in and went to join in on their conversations.

It was not a long drive from there to Jackson…


Strong sunlight. The sun breaking across from the East as I headed North. I stopped here briefly on the way.

...and it was still early as I got under way. The first order of business was to get to the car show. A quick phone call and I soon found the Veteran's Home.


Veterans look on. Chairs were laid out under the portico so the elderly could look at the cars.

There was a number of fairly interesting cars there, one of some interest to me was an Edsel wagon…


Edsel station wagon. A bit rough around the edges, but it is over 60!

…which meant I had finally seen a 2-door, a 4-door, a convertible and a wagon of these unloved models, none of which reached Australia.

A modern Lincoln engine in a mid-sixties Galaxie was a bit different…



Only 281 cubes! A much smaller engine than original in this 2-door Galaxie, but probably more powerful.

…while a highly-polished Falcon utility (sorry, pickup)…



Falcon ‘utility’ Or that’s what it would be called in Australia. Very smart-looking and different.

…contrasted with a car which boasted that 'rust is a colour'…



Appreciating rust. I don’t recall what kind of car it was, but the message was clear. Or is that ‘clear coat’?

…and a Datsun Z-car provided yet another contrast and reminds me now that an Aussie conversion I spotted one day, a 265 Hemi 6 implant, would have attracted attention at this show...


Z car. While we had the 240Z, the 260Z and the 280ZX in Australia, we didn't get the 280Z.

...and a re-engined TR7 yet another:


Re-engined. I’m sure the V6 conversion improved this one, I think it was a Chevy.

The old guys sat in the shade of the portico in their wheelchairs as the car owners chatted and looked over each others' cars. As for me, the Mopar fancier who’d invited me along made sure I was welcomed properly and gave me a nice memento to take home.


My hosts. Though I know them through a Mopar forum, Ollie Patterson and his wife brought this Rambler to the show.

But of course I couldn't stay all day, even though there was a lot to see:


Take your Chrysler to lunch. The Chrysler looked nice and original, I didn’t check the lunch.



Modern addition. Out of place, but I’m sure some of the Veterans appreciated seeing this Dodge.
A nice touch was the lunch tray hanging out of the Chrysler, some of the other cars present can be seen in the background of these pics.

I had to get serious about travelling as I had yet to add another state to my tally on this day. Before I left, Ollie kindly presented me with a memento of the show, an entrant's medallion, which was very kind of him.

Adding that next state would soon change as I headed West and into Louisiana…


Near Bovina. The I20 spreads out so that there’s trees between the oncoming lanes.

…taking note of the very old-fashioned McDonalds at Vicksburg…


Vicksburg McDonalds. One of very few of the old-style McDonalds is at Vicksburg.

…shortly before I crossed the border. Quite a significant border it is, too, the mighty Mississippi:


Crossing the Mississippi. This forms the border between Mississippi and Louisiana...


Important trade routes. ...and has always been an important route for shipping, just as the train on the adjacent bridge is today.

I soon came to the Louisiana Welcome Center at The Mound and here my education took a bit of an upward climb.


Instructive signage. Reading these signs is only minor education compared to what’s available inside.



Time to beware! That people might use the site to collect moneys for religious purposes was strange enough, knowing that there was an official attempt to stop it was stranger, then putting up this sign was the strangest of all.

 

Among the interesting displays at The Mound Welcome Center was information about the 'Louisiana Purchase'. I had never heard of this before, but it was the purchase of land from the French by the US for fifty million Francs and the cancellation of a debt for a further 18 million. This took place in 1803 and amounted to a huge part of the present-day United States being bought all at once. Here's a map:


Louisiana Purchase. A large part of the USA was purchased from the French against the wishes of the Spanish, it would have to be said that this was a bargain buy.

The reason it happened was because Napoleon was in trouble financing his battles against England, though when France had bought the land from the Spanish they had agreed to never sell it except back to Spain. The land involved was all that land from which water flows into the Mississippi-Missouri River system. Except, it seems, that around the Ohio River.

This gave me plenty to think about as I headed West. My reasoning was that this would include almost half of the United States!

And I would see some of it as I spent the rest of the day on these roads...



Almost immediately a challenge to my knowledge of US wildlife…


Bears? Are there really bears in this part of the country? I guess there must be!

About an hour further along, around 65 miles, I dropped off the Interstate for some refreshments…


Just a Saturday afternoon. Life went on for the folk of Louisiana as I drove through. This was in Monroe, where I stopped for fuel and food.

…and as I pressed on from there I saw that some bad weather might come my way:


Weather threatening. But as I headed closer to Texas the weather looked like it would turn nasty.

It didn’t stop me noticing how the miles were rolling up on my van, however.


A milestone for the van. I had to snap this as the odometer rolled around.

Just before leaving Louisiana I stopped at Shreveport to buy some provisions at the Brookshires supermarket. Here was another lesson to be learned, their unique (?) trolleys which are cantilevered so they fit around the... well, look at the photos:





They are certainly different!

Then, after driving through Bossier City…


Bossier buildings. On a day during which I barely saw any city buildings, Bossier City was different. The building on the right is the Horseshoe Casino, the odd-looking one is a bank head office, while off to the left is yet another casino.

…came the Texas border. My goal was to be in Oklahoma City around midday on Sunday, so I didn't want to waste time looking around the Dallas-Fort Worth city with its likely confusions and I planned to take more back-roads (mere highways...) to head for the Interstate which ran North out of that city towards Oklahoma City.


Friendly state. A reassurance as I arrived in Texas.

I began seeing frequent police activity…


Not so friendly! Some, however, were not so reassured.

…but fortunately it didn't involve me or interfere with my progress. Before Longview I tried to get a pic of a huge ‘trailer park’, but I was almost past before I could get the camera working.


Trailer park. We have similar in Australia, but notably different in that there’s no pretence that these can be towed away, ours have to be trucked in and out.

I was keeping my eyes peeled for the right exit to head North and avoid the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but this wasn’t the one…


Exit for North. I didn’t take this one. I went on another thirty miles or so...

…so I went on past Liberty City and Owenville, seeing some swampy areas as I drove:



Sabine River. This river and its overflow created some less-pleasant scenery.


Swampy country. Certainly not what I expected to see in Texas.

I departed the Interstate and soon found myself in Lindale, where the Renfro’s fireworks business had some interesting displays:



Automotive variety. A Volvo suspended below a helicopter, a Hudson cab from the early fifties in the background.



Anglia in the mix. An Anglia certainly looked out of place for America, there’s also a police car and a 48/49 Ford in this picture.



The business end. Fireworks for sale, but I was looking at the 1951 Plymouth Special De Luxe.

I took another turn at Mineola, went past Alba…


More police action. I don’t know if it was coincidence, but I saw more in this corner of Texas than anywhere else on the trip.

…and as darkness came I was getting close to the Oklahoma border. Some of the scenery was a bit drier than I'd been seeing for the past few days, but it was still green.


Getting dark. As the sun descended I was travelling in grazing country, more like what I expected to see.

I camped for the night in the Thackerville Rest Area a few miles after crossing the border. Overnight a loaded semi-trailer would come in with a strange sight in its cargo...

 

A fairly short run this day, June 29, 2014:



I woke as the day dawned, it was nice and fresh and in the half-light I looked around to be confronted with the sight of this semi-trailer load of all-covered-up Audis…



Audis under wraps. The first time I saw new cars in transit with bespoke car covers.

Obviously there was nobody around to talk to in the Welcome Center, so I started driving towards Oklahoma City.

Recall that car I went to look at in upstate New York? Well, the reason that bloke had bought that car was to get one piece of trim for an identical model he had. So when I decided to buy it from him I had to find that trim piece and in Oklahoma City I had located one of that model which had been too close to a barbecue and suffered enough from the fire to be stripped out.

I bought that trim and more, also the tail lights, headlight surrounds and grille thinking I'd like to have these on hand should the car get damaged in Australia. Not that I was planning to keep it, but I had ideas of selling it and making a few bob on it.

So, even though I was committed to buy these pieces - which are unique to that fairly low-production model - I didn't have a car on which I could use them and I'd have to onsell them if possible. The car was a 1965 Dodge Monaco.

Heading up the I35 now, I went past a couple of towns before stopping at Paul's Valley for breakfast. Then, as I headed back towards the Interstate I spotted a trio of new Peterbilts being delivered the American way…



Peterbilts. Not done in Australia any more, but a common delivery method in the US.

I had been trying to get a good pic of this method of delivering new trucks since my first trip, the only ones I'd got then having been marred by a smear on the camera's lens. Now I got a better shot.

I had some time on my hands and stopped to photograph a bridge not far North of there, the surface was coming apart to some extent and I got a pic of the river to the East of the bridge, where there was a lot of erosion present. I see on Google Earth that this bridge has had a bit of a rebuild.



Erosion. That’s what rivers do by their very nature. I took this because I stopped to photograph the bridge...



Bridge breaking up. Frost damage, I guess, lots of the concrete has been coming off the deck, much of it gathering to the sides as rubble.

A diversion in to Lindsay put me in touch with what it looks like off the highways, and from there I went to Norman, just South of Oklahoma City, to visit Gary Futrell, from whom I bought a 4-speed gearbox. I spent a little time with Gary checking out a couple of choices before loading the gearbox into the passenger's floor area.

Then I headed into Oklahoma City to meet up with the man from whom I'd bought the Dodge Monaco parts. He had a number of interesting cars there, including a van similar to mine…



Plymouth and van. A broad set of interests means a number of different Mopars in this yard.

The De Soto Suburban…



De Soto Suburban. A long chassis and an extra row of seats, plenty of room for a big 1950s family.

…he told me, was a popular model with large Negro families in the South as a used car, while his collection of Forward Look cars was impressive even if they did need a bit of TLC.

On picking up my goodies I then sought out somewhere to get something to eat and somewhere to buy fuel at a decent price. Then I looked for (and found) the Oklahoma Welcome Centre…



Tourist Information Center. Though the building is the same as the one I thought I was looking for (which I visited with Janet in 2012), this one was on the I40.(GE)

…which had free coffee for visitors before striking out in an Easterly direction on the I40.



Through the hills. Cuttings such as these were something I hadn’t seen for some time.

It was about 175 miles to the Arkansas border, which would get me far enough for the afternoon. No need for any speeding…



Care needed. Some might have needed to hurry more than me, it seemed. Note, too, that there are minimum and maximum speeds on the sign beyond the end of the fence.

…though others seemed to get caught out. There was variety to note in the passing traffic, too:



Houses on the highway. Just normal Sunday afternoon traffic… including a couple of house sections.

And I also noted that a highway patrol car was helping out to keep a breakdown man safe as he worked on a truck:



Safety first. I would think this truck mechanic would have been pleased to see the police car pull up and provide a barrier between him and passing traffic.

To give a change of vista at about the hundred mile mark there was a water view, Lake Eufala being crossed by the I40:



Lake Eufaula. Some water made a change of scenery here.

It was just before the border with Arkansas, near Gore and the bridge over the Arkansas River, that I saw a crop-dusting plane doing its stuff right beside the Interstate. I couldn't help but pull up and watch, taking some photos of it as it flew around dropping its load in a precise pattern over the crop.





This took place as the sunset…



Oklahoma Sunset. What better way to say goodbye to Oklahoma than to appreciate a sunset over it from the Arkansas border?

…spelled the end of another day on the road, and as I entered Arkansas I was going into the 33rd state I'd visited on this trip and there now only remained three states in Continental USA which I hadn't seen - Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado.

But these were some distance away, and I shouldn't have been counting Tennessee until the next day, when I'd be visiting yet another forum contact and driving some distance through that state.

Soon after entering Arkansas the Welcome Centre near Fort Smith cropped up. I passed it by after a quick look, deciding to put just a few extra miles into the day.

I went on a little further to the Arkansas Rest Area near Ozark before pulling up to sleep. This one was actually harder to navigate as it brought traffic in at the Eastern end, sent it towards the West, then a loop carried it back towards the East again on leaving.



Ozark Rest Area. Not clear in this Google Earth screenshot is that this rest area sits up on a hill above the Interstate, complicating its entry road.

But I wasn't to know all about that until the morning…

 

The Upper Mississippi is a different river than the one that goes into the Gulf of Mexico. Hydrographically, the lower Miss. is a continuation of the Ohio. If you're ever back in the U.S. go to the extreme bottom of Illinois. There is a town called Cairo (pronounced Karo) with a park on the point where the two rivers meet. It's an old Civil War fort called Fort Defiant. You can stand there and see the brown water of the Ohio and the grayish water of the Upper Miss. meet and stay separate as they go down stream. However, in the 18th and 19th Centuries, it was all about bragging rights so the upper and lower rivers are called the same.

 

Very interesting...

I can see how that is on the map, almost, grouch.

But still there are areas further up which flow into the Mississippi which are not included in that mapped area.

 

On the subject of the rest area's makeup...

By turning the image around, to look from the North, and getting close to the ground after using street view, I got a bit of angle on the picture which shows how it's up on a hill...



And from the highway level:





Also notice how it's tantalisingly close to the local sewage treatment works!

 

June 30, 2014...

Awakening at the Ozark Rest Area after a good rest, I was a little bamboozled by the way the road out seemed to go in circles. But it did lead me back to the I40 and I started my crossing of Arkansas.



Soon I recalled that the night before there had been signs to 'take another route' due to major roadworks on the Interstate. These signs kept cropping up but for now I followed the Interstate. I got a bit of a look at Lake Conway, where I tried to get good pics…



Small end. From the Interstate there’s only a small part of Lake Conway visible. SR365 is the road across the other side.



Stumps in the water. The other side of the freeway there were stumps visible in the water, apparently Cypress trees which have died off.

…but I didn’t get enthusiastic about much else that morning, shown by the fact that I drove almost a hundred miles before I took these pics.

Past Little Rock there were more roadworks signs – including signs recommending that drivers find another route - and before too long I took to roads to the South of the Interstate running roughly parallel to it. Not before I'd seen some of the roadworks in progress and the condensing of the four lanes into two, however:



Big bollards. Back to ‘construction’ season on the Interstate, as I’d experienced in the Northern states.



Down to two lanes. Bridge works in progress, less progress potential for the traffic. I would see more later.

I took the Carlisle exit and along the alternative route I passed through a number of small towns. One of them, Hazen, was home to what must be the largest grain silo I've ever seen…



Huge silos. The fertile soils, good rainfalls and hard-working farmers means big crops requiring such huge storage facilities.

…while at the sleepy hamlet of De Valls Bluff…



De Valls Bluff. Considering that traffic was being advised to take alternate routes, this little town was very quiet.

...the exit to town is over a high new concrete bridge over the White River. But right next to that new concrete structure is an old and very rusty railway bridge with a lift-span which is permanently lifted:



New bridge, old bridge. But for different modes of transport, of course. Both have plenty of height for shipping on the White River.



Rusting away. Disused, neglected, I keep wondering if the old rail bridge will one day fall into the river.

Apparently the railway closed years ago and the bridge was auctioned, selling for $1 (or something similar) to someone who has done nothing about it ever since.

Brinkley came and went, this fine example of poor taste being part of the scenery there…



Strange combo. I don’t feel these ‘rubber bands’ and big-diameter wheels are logically used on this type of vehicle.



Road to Brinkley. The drive through this diversion was quite nice, also only lightly trafficked.

...while I also spotted this old Plymouth somewhere in that vicinity before I resumed travel on the I40:



Befinned Plymouth. One wonders if this late-fifties model will ever be restored.

Rains must have been heavy between there and Memphis as many paddocks were inundated like this:



Flooding. It looks like this paddock alongside the I40 has seen plenty of rain.

And again there were roadworks, but I stayed on the Interstate…



Lanes closed again. Once more the Interstate was reduce to two lanes by roadworks.

After covering about 220 miles of Arkansas – and about 430 miles since my last fill in Oklahoma City – I pulled in to Shell Lake to get some food and fuel, being rewarded with the sight of this Chrysler:



Chrysler wagon. I don’t know that the owner would have been so pleased with the door ajar in transit.

With California plates, I guess someone in the East has bought it as a collector car and paid to have it hauled across the country.

The reason for all the roadworks was evident in the deterioration of the concrete…



Bridge deck deterioration. The reinforcing rods well and truly uncovered, no wonder there was roadwork going on.



Plenty of surface missing. The amount of steel evident meant this bridge might have been the next one to be repaired.

…I guess this is due to the effect of freezing, water soaking into the concrete and then expanding as it freezes to crack the surface and flake pieces off. But it was still a surprise to me to see the reinforcing rods which should have been buried under a couple of inches or more.

Ultimately I came to the mighty Mississippi River again, and as I crossed the huge bridge I entered Tennessee for the second time…



Memphis skyline. As I approached the Mississippi the skyline of Memphis came into view.



Big bridge. Any bridge over the Mississippi is a big bridge, it’s a big river and was swelling as floodwaters from Montana and Wyoming started to reach this point.

…and I set the Garmin for Clarksville. The Interstate was flowing well, just a few roadworks…



More roadworks. Not such an impediment here, but the speed limit was reduced a little.

…and after a time I crossed the Tennessee River…



Tennessee River. There’s a lot of water flowing here, too, though it wasn’t in flood.

…and eight miles after that I left the Interstate at Hurricane Mills and went once again onto back roads, now through the hills of Tennessee and getting ever-closer to my visit with Rich McMahon.



Not so good. Not everyone was having the smooth run I was…

Rich was once on a design team at Chrysler but now lived in Clarksville with his small family. I had covered about 145 miles on the I40 since entering Tennesses when I turned North to Waverly…



Waverly. It’s not really as quiet a town as this view suggests, the main street crosses this North/South road and there’s a highway crossing just ahead where one of the main roads radiating out of Nashville passes the town.

Here the scenery was more intimate. Green, as everywhere, but with variety like small farms, trailer homes and 2-lane blacktop heading me onwards to my goal for the evening.



All kinds of traffic. Good 2-lane roads, all sorts of traffic to be encountered.



Hills and farms. Lots of farmers are in these hills.



Trailer homes. Probably an indication of a level of lower income families in the hills.

...Erin and Palmyra came and went, as did the plentiful traffic, then I was struck by the corn paddock beneath the bridge over the Cumberland River on the outskirts of Clarksville:



Cornfield. Beneath the bridge over the Cumberland river was this huge crop.



Placid river. Looking the other way, the river looked placid and a nice setting for the homes on the banks.

I drove on the short distance to the McMahon home and Rich and his wife welcomed me appropriately, and so did their excitable young son Raymond, and showed me a room where I could spend the night. I had not slept anywhere but in the van since I visited the folks in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, so this was a little different.

We entertained the youngster a little and talked a lot about Rich's experience working on the Chrysler engineering design team. He told me one big job he'd been on was the work which enabled the Town & Country to come in all wheel drive, an example of which vehicles he had.

Such nice family surroundings were warming to me and I enjoyed a good meal and a good sleep in the McMahon family home. In the morning we’d have some more fun together…[/i]

 

Tuesday, July 1, 2014… not far to drive:




Clarksville is home to Fort Campbell, which is home to airborne divisions of the US Army and spreads across the border into Kentucky as well. They have something of a museum there and Rich wanted me to see that. So we went…


AH56A Cheyenne. This one was a failure, but so were many others. An interesting place.

As you can see, young Raymond was having fun too.

Then it was time to depart for the fairly straightforward drive across Kentucky and Southern Indiana to get to Bloomington to see my son again. With appropriate farewells I fired up the van and headed North. It was all easy running through Hopkinsville and onto the Edward T Breathitt Pennyrice Parkway which goes through Madisonville and took me almost the whole way across the state.

While I had become so used to seeing the deep green of the corn growing everywhere, I did see a crop which had been harvested, it might have been wheat, but it might have been something else too:


Wheatfield? In contrast to all the green, mostly corn, growing, this crop was ready to harvest.

Just before leaving Kentucky, the 34th state I'd visited on the trip so far, I saw a sight I didn't expect to see at the Chrysler dealer's at Henderson. Audobon Chrysler had put a Viper up on a pole high above their car lot…


Viper on a stick. This was an eye-catching gimmick for Audobon Chrysler.

It wasn't far from there to the Ohio River, which forms the border between Kentucky and Indiana at this point. A big river, it's one of those which flows into the Mississippi system (but this land, I learn, was not part of the Louisiana Purchase) and it had massive twin cantilever bridges over it. I had to stop and take a photo of them:


Twin bridges. Linking Kentucky and Indiana are these twin bridges over the Ohio River.

From this point into Bloomington saw me using the new I69 where possible, and detouring where the road wasn't yet complete. I had been on the Northern sections of this new road as it carved its way towards Michigan earlier in the trip. Quite early after getting onto this new road I saw one of the Dodge versions of the ‘minivans’ on the side of the road…


Dodge ‘minivan’. Not as well kept as the examples owned by Rich...

It was an easy run, despite the complications the new road caused for the Garmin, and it led me right up to the part of town where Justin lives. Once again he had found somewhere to have me stay while I was there:


TownePlace Suites. I had two nights here, thanks to Justin. He spent time with me there and helped me plan my time when he wouldn’t be available.GE

I was actually hoping he would be able to accompany me on the run to Colorado, as the following Friday was a holiday (July 4) and it would have been good for him to go for the drive, help me ascend Pikes Peak and then fly back in time for work on the Monday. Unfortunately, he was to be on call for work all that weekend and couldn't do it.

I had some free time on the second afternoon to go into Indianapolis and catch up with some people Janet and I had met on the 2012 trip. Justin's wife, who was working tight schedules and hard to catch up with, finally managed to have lunch with Justin and me at the Bloomington Outback Steakhouse.


Justin and Lore. We had lunch together at the Outback Steakhouse.

But even that wasn't until the day I left. While I was there Justin arranged his work so that he could work from home and spend more time with me. My next 'date' was with Rich Kinsley in Omaha, Nebraska, but on the way I had to pick up some parts for a friend at home, these were in Iowa.

There was still lots to do, and it would start with a drive across some minor roads to head into Illinois, I left there in the mid-afternoon of Thursday, July 3, 2014…

 

After leaving Justin and Lore in Bloomington and spending a few moments with Bill Parker, I headed out with a view to covering as much of the distance as I could towards Burlington, Iowa.



Initially I was on back roads, where crops were growing and people were busy…


Busy people. Plenty of traffic on country roads, they had work to do.

…and I was making progress. This picture…


Owen to Putnam. To emphasise the progress I was making, the little green sign on the left says, “Enter Putnam Co, Leave Owen Co.”

… shows that progress as I was striking out onto the prairie. I was now beginning to see cornfield after cornfield…


Beginning of endless corn. I didn’t yet know, but I was about to be surrounded by corn.

...then I went through Crawfordsville where I took this photo of a warning road sign:


Warning sign. Signs like this abound in roadworks across the USA.

This was placed in front of the Carnegie Museum and there was some kind of roadworks going on there. From there I joined the Interstate, though somewhere along that stretch I stopped and got a photo of some wheat harvesting going on…


More harvesting. Mechanisation has done wonders for farming around the world, but nowhere is it as evident as it is in America’s heartland.

…but it wasn't long before another state border cropped up:


Different warnings. Crossing into Illinois just near Danville there were more warnings. Cigarette bootlegging and radar detectors are frowned upon there.

Surrounded by corn, I was again moved to photograph this abundance of growth I'd been seeing much of the way in my journey inland from the East Coast:


Not corn. This crop might have been legumes, it wasn’t corn…


Plenty of corn. … this one is corn, however, as cornfields filled the miles.


As the sun dropped. Still surrounded by green crops and prosperous farms.


Green forever. Looking back with the lowering sun lighting the corn, it was again a testimony to the fertility and rainfall in this land.

And there was still plenty to go. Through the late afternoon and evening I ploughed on putting the miles of prairie behind me. The sunset arrived and found me still driving, and into the dark as well.


In my direction. The setting sun and oncoming headlights of the encroaching evening on the prairie.I'm not actually sure where I stopped that night. Writing this up almost five years after the trip it has escaped me, but a sales docket I’ve found says I bought fuel at Knoxville, as well as a chocolate milk, at 10pm.

It’s most likely that I got the drink as a bit of a ‘top up’ before driving on to Galesburg where there was a McDonalds at which I could get a meal, use their wi-fi and sleep in the car park. I know I had breakfast at Monmouth the next morning and I wouldn't have driven very far before eating.

Would I?

The Mobil at Knoxville was in a quiet spot…


Just fuel and a drink. From here I pressed on to Galesburg to eat, go online and sleep at McDonalds.

I had, therefore, packed almost 300 miles of driving into the afternoon and evening and the van was ticking over nicely to cover that easily.

Undoubtedly I had a solid sleep before an early start I wanted to be sure of the next morning - I had people to see in Iowa, but I had no idea at this stage of the spectacular event I'd be seeing in Des Moines…

 

Friday, July 4, 2014. After leaving Illinois I would be entering Iowa. The van was getting along quite well, I was fit as a fiddle and enjoying the drive… the first stage of my course for this Friday:



When I awoke on this Friday morning I had no idea what the day held in store. A friend at home, Glendon Perkins, had asked me to meet up with a Forward Look enthusiast just North of Burlington, Iowa to pick up some parts he'd bought from him. I would then transfer them to the pickup I was shipping home after my trip.

Ahead of me I knew the Mississippi River was in flood. Big rains had fallen over states like Montana and Wyoming since I had come through there six weeks earlier and I'd seen news reports of the flood making its way downstream.

Of course, my first needs of the day were simpler, I would be wanting some breakfast and I was getting to the point where I'd be looking for more fuel. So I started driving and soon reached Monmouth, leaving the I74 to head towards Burlington on IL-110.

On the Northern edge of Monmouth…


Monmouth satisfies my needs. Where Monmouth’s Main Street meets the IL-110 there was plenty of food outlets and a number of gas stations to choose from.GE

…there was fuel (almost 30 gallons at Super Pantry at $3.69.9 per gallon) and food to be had, and then as I skirted around the Western edge I was sufficiently impressed by their 'Citizen's Lake' and the flock of ducks on it that I stopped to get pictures…


Cotizens Lake. Monmouth has made an ornamental lake on the edge of town...


Citizen’s ducks. ...and the ducks have made it their home.

Still the corn grew alongside of the road, lush and green, stretching as far as the eye could see. I'd been looking at this corn and other crops growing since I had left the Atlantic Coast. Two weeks after returning home I would be driving to Moree, maybe 250 miles from our East Coast to find it like a desert despite having been flooded six months earlier.

But here the lush and green of the crops had stretched well over 1,000 miles inland and it wasn't over yet. This house sitting in the midst of it was typical of the sights I saw as I got ever closer to the new big suspension bridge at Burlington.…


Life among the corn. The abundance of cornfields probably makes for a pleasant life here. This house stood out in more ways than one.

I stopped also at some kind of a marker stone, I'm not sure what it marked, but I took more photos of cornfields before I pressed on towards the Mississippi.


From the marker. Still more corn, the season looks good.

And I was not to be disappointed by the sight! To my right, anchored against islands in the river, were shipping barges. To my left the rail bridge was barely out of the water, while before me was another lesson to be learned in US history.


Bridge in view. The sight I was looking for, the new suspension bridge over the flooded Mississippi.

And apparently in deference to the flooding…


Upstream. Barges tied up in the river, traditional transport means.

…the barges were in a ‘safe-keeping’ mode out there moored to the islands. In fact, there were lots of preparations made as the muddy waters made their way Southwards.


Railway bridge. Almost sitting on the water, this is the third bridge built here.

Everyone's seen the letters, 'BNSF' on trains, right? That stands for 'Burlington Northern Santa Fe', and Burlington was for decades the port where the railway fed into the river boats that took freight to the sea. Or upstream. The first rail bridge over the Mississippi was built in 1868, it was replaced in 1893 and the one I saw was just a few years old.