Alexandria, Virginia to Littleton, Colorado
I feel like I need to include
at least a brief summary of the final eight days of our journey, even though we’ve
now been home for a full week. Russell
and Carol had to return to work on Monday morning, so there was no reason for
us to stick around Alexandria. So we
departed right after they both left for work. Leaving Alexandria, we drove down
the George Washington Parkway past Mount Vernon, then took US 1 down to its
merge with I-95. At Richmond we cut over
to US 360 to get away from the Interstate.
We spent Monday night at Staunton River State Park near South Boston,
Virginia. The only notable happening was
the failure of our power converter, the device that provides the conversion of
110 volt AC shore power to 12 volt DC for the motorhome lighting and
accessories as well as managing the charging of the coach battery (the
motorhome has two batteries B the normal battery up under the hood for the truck
plus a deep cycle battery under the floor of the coach for the interior
lighting and accessories). This was
inconvenient not only because it was hot and muggy and we were hoping to run
the air conditioner, but more so because without the controller we couldn=t charge the coach battery, which would soon deplete
and make it impossible to run any of the lights, the refrigerator, or the vent
fan in the roof . We survived the night,
though, by running a separate extension cord to the shore power outlet to run a
portable fan. Normally this would have
been a bigger problem had it occurred out on the road somewhere, but we would
be in Columbia, South Carolina the next day and Columbia is the location of our
motorhome manufacturer=s factory. We
had already scheduled a visit there to have some other minor maintenance items
taken care of, so we simply added the replacement of the power converter to the
list.
We spent most of the day
Tuesday driving down through Greensboro and Charlotte, North Carolina on our
way to Columbia, where we=d be parking the Tiger in my brother=s driveway and spending the next three nights. It was the beginning of the afternoon rush
hour when we arrived in Columbia, so it was a bit hectic getting though the
city on our way out to Irmo, where John and Charlie live. However, a glass of chilled white wine with
them after we settled in relieved the stress of the day=s drive. It=s been a while since we=d seen
them B the last time we were with them was a stopover during
our 2010 trip to Florida and the east coast B so we
had a lot of catching up to do.
After a big breakfast
Wednesday morning, Jeanette and Charlie went off to the local nursery to look
at plants while John and I headed over to Best Buy to pick up a video streaming
device to get him set up for streaming video on their TV. The simplest, and least expensive device was
a ARoku Streaming Stick,@ a
module that was not much bigger than a USB memory stick and which plugged
directly into an HDMI port on the rear
of the TV. It was a very simple and
straight forward installation, and we were soon exploring all the options for
streaming video sources such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon TV, etc. Dinner that night was at a wonderful seafood
place, the Blue Marlin, in downtown Columbia.
The first order of business
on Thursday was getting to the Provan factory, which is located near the
Columbia airport. We had hoped to get
the original items on our list done in a couple of hours, but the addition of
replacing the power converter took quite a bit longer than I had
anticipated. It was around 2 PM when we
finally got away from there and headed back to John and Charlie=s. Their
daughter, Lynn, and granddaughters Mira and Rosemary joined us for dinner.
Friday morning we were off
again, up I-26 through Spartanburg toward Asheville, North Carolina. Just before reaching Asheville we cut across
a series of back roads up through the Great Smoky Mountains. We hit I-40 at Waynesville and headed west
into Tennessee. This portion of I-40
follows a steep gorge down the west slope of the Smokey Mountains, through some
spectacular scenery. We continued through
Knoxville in a rain shower, and on to Cumberland Mountain State Park near
Crossville, Tennessee for the night.
Saturday was spent driving
across central Tennessee to Nashville, then up I-24 into western Kentucky. At Paducah we cut west across US 60, and
crossed the Ohio River just above its confluence with the Mississippi near Cairo,
Illinois. The map showed a park at the
confluence of the two great rivers, so we stopped there for a while to get some
photos and videos of the actual joining of the waters. The park was rather decrepit and run-down,
overgrown with weeds, and spoiled by a bunch of barges loaded with scrap metal
tied directly to the adjacent Ohio River bank.
But it was really neat to stand on the extreme point of land which
comprised the final separation of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, with the
former by my left foot and the latter by my right. You could see the actual joining of the
waters by the color B the Mississippi is brown and muddy, while the Ohio is
noticeably cleaner and bluer.
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| Confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers -- Ohio River to the left, Mississippi River to the right. Note the muddy brown water of the Mississippi. |
From Cairo B which itself is a rather rundown and decrepit shadow
of the formerly important and historic town that used to be B we drove up the east bank of the Mississippi a few
miles before crossing over to Cape Girardeau, Missouri for the night. We arrived in time to make it to the 4:00
Mass at the downtown cathedral. We
stopped at Fazolli=s after Mass for a spaghetti dinner, then enjoyed a
round of miniature golf at the RV park where we were staying.
It rained most of Saturday
night and into Sunday morning, but cleared up by the time we reached St
Louis. We bypassed this city, going
around the western loop and picking up the small and winding State Highway 79,
which hugs the western bank of the Mississippi River up to Hannibal, the
boyhood home of Mark Twain. This road
makes its way through the rich farmlands along the river and crosses several of
the steeply rolling, heavily wooded limestone hills which define the edge of
the Mississippi bottomlands. We stopped
for lunch at the little town of Clarksville, a perfect example of a typical 19th
century steamboat landing city with its main street sloping right down to the
river. After lunch, we walked down to
the river bank to see the dam and locks which are part of the Corps of
Engineers river navigation system. The
river was quite high with the spring run-off, measuring 29 feet above normal
stage at the locks. There is a monument
in the park that marks the highest river level during the great flood of 1973,
and I=d estimate that the level was no more than five or six
feet below that mark.
Leaving Hannibal, we headed
west on US 36, which we=d be following all the way across the states of
Missouri and Kansas back to Colorado. We
spent a very hot and muggy night at Pershing State Park near Leclede,
Missouri. This park is named after
General John J Pershing of World War I fame, who spent his boyhood years in the
town of Leclede.
Continuing west on US 36, we
crossed the Missouri River at St Joseph and entered Kansas, the 25th
state of our long road trip. The highway
heads due west across Kansas in almost a straight line for approximately 475
miles. It runs through the whole gamut
of Kansas geography and geology, making it a much more scenic and interesting
drive than the blandness of I-70, only a about 50 or so miles to the
south. After 340 miles of Missouri and
Kansas we were ready to stop for the night, so we set up for our last night at
Prairie Dog State Park near Norton, Kansas.
This park is situated on a medium-sized lake which is supposedly one of
the top bass fishing lakes in the country.
In contrast with the muggy heat and overcast skies of the previous
night, this night was cool and the air was clear B almost
like being in Colorado. Well, the
elevation here was 2350 feet, which is getting up near Colorado altitude, so
that could have something to with it. To
top it off, we were treated to probably the most beautiful sunset of the entire
trip.
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| Sunset on our final night -- Prairie Dog State Park, Kansas. |
The final 300 miles home were
almost anti-climactic. We crossed the
Colorado border a few miles west of St Francis, Kansas, and spent the next
hours traversing some of the most boring terrain of the seven-week journey B mile after mile of dryland farm and pasture land, the
highway straight as an arrow along the section lines and only occasionally
cutting diagonally across one or two square-mile sections to rejoin the due
east-west section boundaries a mile or two to the north or south, This lonesome highway passes through a series
of almost ghost towns with names like Joes, Cope, and my favorite, the suitably
named Last Chance. Highway 36 joined
I-70 at Byers, Colorado, about 40 miles east of Denver, making it a short hop
to home at last.
Here=s the overall trip summary:
Number of Days: 50
Total Miles Driven: 9840
Number of States: 25
Number of Provinces: 7
