It’s a Big Dam Country — Day 20

Much dri­ving. 525 miles.

Left Cape Girardeau at 9:30. Hung on to the inter­state through St. Louis and a bit north to Win­field. I went look­ing for the Win­field fer­ry ter­mi­nal. I found the ter­mi­nal — sort of. The fer­ry was­n’t run­ning today.

There were a bunch of hous­es on stilts. A lot of con­struc­tion going on too.

The dam is just down­stream of the fer­ry terminal.

There is a park next to the dam. (Of course) It’s only been open a cou­ple of weeks and the pic­nic ground is still mud­dy. But there are trees and water front.

The dam is red! It’s first one that does­n’t have the gates paint­ed blue.

There’s a truck parked up on top next to the hoist.

The Corps of Engi­neer’s chan­nel patrol boat Pathfind­er was mov­ing around. It’s men­tioned in this arti­cle on dredg­ing.

Here’s the day’s arty shot.

Today’s tug and barge com­bo. Sier­ra Dawn. I did­n’t stay for the whole process.

This is how they tie a bunch of barges togeth­er and to the tug.

So there I was — still in Win­field, MO. It’s hot and sticky and a long way to go to get to any­where. I asked the mag­ic machine how long. how far to the MILs. 384 miles. I went.

Head­ing north right into the weath­er. I could see the front. Above me clear blue sky with lit­tle fluffy clouds. Ahead grey — top to bot­tom. It took about an hour to catch up to it. With­in 20 min­utes the temps went from 84 to 61 and the rain start­ed falling. I nev­er real­ly escaped the rain. Some­times it was just driz­zle a cou­ple of times it was pull-over-to-the-shoul­der bucketing.

Tomor­row, if I can out run the weath­er I’d lke to get out of the midwest.

Today’s Route:

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