3/30 – 3/31/19
Feeling the restlessness that stirs with spring, I decided to go. It didn’t really matter where – only that I got away for a while from tedium and dead grass. South seemed the most sensible direction; so south I went, with an inflatable kayak in the trunk of my rental car, a battered road bike strapped to the trunk, and a few garbage bags of clothes in the back seat.
3-30
Waking to a sleety rain, I collected some last bits of baggage and set off. The Mississippi River, I had decided, would be the spine of my road trip; and on this first day, I would follow the river to St. Louis. Along the way, as at the beginning of my western excursion three years ago, I paralleled Route 66. This time, however, I stayed on the interstate, and – after stopping, in good road trip fashion, for corn dogs – struck west toward Missouri.
As the looming bluffs along the Mississippi came into view, the cold rain that had been falling all morning suddenly gave way to snow. The river itself, barely visible through the curtain of white, was in major flood, seemingly only a few feet below the levee tops on the Illinois side.
It was still snowing heavily when I pulled into Hannibal. After touring Mark Twain’s childhood home – now the center of an ambitiously-priced museum – I walked a few blocks to the Mississippi. From the top of the levee, I could see that the water was four or five feet higher than the city streets. On the river side, coffee-colored water rushed over a series of submerged parking lots and railroad tracks, piling debris against a forlorn swing set and sweeping to the snowy horizon.
Heading south, I turned up the gullied gravel drive of Hannibal’s Riverview Cemetery, curious to see whether any of Mark Twain’s contemporaries were whiling away eternity there. The Cemetery was small – only an acre or two – and situated on a steep hill, down which several tombstones were visibly slipping. I walked a few minutes up and down the lanes of tombs, spattered by cold water dripping from the barren trees. Far below, the swollen river rolled south toward St. Louis.
I followed suit along a two lane highway that meandered over a series of bluffs before plunging down to the floodplain. In several places, I found that the Mississippi had risen to within a few inches of the pavement, and the left median vanished disconcertingly into miles of rushing water.
In combination with an almost total absence of other cars, the low clouds and cold wind lent a desolate feel to this section of the road.
After passing through the half-flooded town of Louisiana, Missouri (where I had to detour around the submerged main street), I set my course for the Illinois suburbs of St. Louis, where my aunt and uncle had generously offered to put me up for the night.
3-31
I spent the morning – sunny, though still windy and quite cold – on a self-guided architectural tour of St. Louis. Having explored downtown during my visit three years ago, I focused on the outlying neighborhoods, and particularly on the grand but often faded buildings of the north side.
After a lunch of fried chicken, I turned to the day’s main event: a ride up and back along the St. Louis riverfront trail, which runs about 13 miles from the Gateway Arch to the old Chain of Rocks Bridge. On arriving in the parking lot, however, I discovered the massive flood gates up, and the trail closed. With the help of my phone’s map app and an online pdf of the St. Louis bike lane network, I plotted an alternate route to the Chain of Rocks Bridge. This, it turned out, brought me through a dusty industrial area and a series of badly decayed neighborhoods.
When I was finally able to access the path, about eight miles north of downtown, I found it almost completely underwater.
Determined to reach the Chain of Rocks Bridge, I rode along the puddle-pocked and glass-glittering shoulder of a busy highway. When I finally reached the bridge, I discovered that it was closed for repairs. And so, after taking a few disconsolate pictures, I began the return ride, eyes watering from the sting of an icy headwind.