Location: Trail of Tears State Park, MO
We tried to find the most obscure roads to get from Tennessee to Trail of Tears State Park in Missouri. We knew we'd be crossing thru 4 states today and driving where several big rivers converge. Fun! We ended up taking the history trail through Tennessee. We passed by several old ore furnaces used during the Civil War.
Ned suggested we stop into Fort Donelson in TN and what a good choice it was! Fascinating Civil War history. This is where Ulysses S. Grant won his first big victory and earned the nickname "Unconditional Surrender Grant." The battle that took place here was instrumental in the South losing the war. The Union took control of several important waterways, thus controlling the shipping lanes and enabling them to takeover Nashville. We really enjoyed the Visitor Center/Museum and the movie explaining all this was awesome.
As we were touring the battlefield and National Park, as luck would have it, a huge barge came drifting down the Cumberland River on its way to the Ohio River. I just love this shot of Ned standing next to the mammoth cannons with the barge slowly making its way up the river.
This river (Cumberland) feeds into the Ohio which converges into the Mississippi. Really gives you a perspective on just how mighty the Mississippi is!
This spot was so gorgeous we decide to have a picnic lunch here. Nevermind it was 99 deg. in the shade.
We took the trace thru Land Between the Lakes and crossed into Kentucky. (So far this trip we've seen two beavers run across the road. One in Cherokee and one today in Kentucky. Pretty strange, I wish I had caught them on camera.) We crossed onto the Southern tip of Illinois at Fort Defiance near Cairo where the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers converge. Here's exactly where we are on the map! Pretty cool!!
That's the Ohio River on top and the Mississippi River on the bottom.
This is also the place that Lewis & Clark camped out for 5 days in 1803 teaching each other how to use a sextant for celestrial navigation and surveying before they took off on their big trip.
Dang...the power of these two massive bodies of water converging is impressive! Here's our first attempt at posting a video on the blog. Hope it works!
We continued up the Great River Road (GRR) along the Great Mississippi, finally crossing over into Missouri. We really enjoyed exploring the town of Cape Girardeau. Like many towns along the Mississippi River they have a huge river wall to protect the town from flooding. What this town did that was unique was paint several murals alongs the wall depicting the towns history. It goes on and on for several blocks and is quite impressive!
And another close up of one of the murals. This one is depicting when President Taft came to town.
Ned along the wall reading about the murals
We're camped tonight right ON the Mississippi River. We tried to camp here two years ago when doing the GRR Road trip, but it was completely flooded. The first thing Ned did upon arrival was hop on his bike and head down to the river. He's like a kid enjoying watching the tug boats push the barges upstream. It's going to be a lot of fun to hang out tonight and watch life on the river. The only downside is there's a railroad track about 10 feet from our campsite. Sure hope this isn't a working railroad! We talked to the campground host and he said that the river is expected to crest in two days and most likely they'll be evacuating the park.
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