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:

View It’s a Big Dam Coun­try — Day 20 in a larger map