April 29 Flotsam and Leeches

It rained a lot during the night as we slept. The report said it rained about 0.9" so glad that we were inside for the night! When we looked out at the Mississippi before we left, there was all sorts of branches and logs floating down rapidly on our side of the river.

  The road from Louisiana to Hannibal at first was fairly flat as we were in the bottomlands of the Salt River.   When we eventually crossed it, we were amazed by amount of large logs and other smaller debris moving almost continually downstream, sometimes in large clumps,  because of the recent storms.   We realized that was the source of most of what we were seeing in the Mississippi as it empties out just upstream from Louisiana.  

  After crossing the river, we left the bottomlands and found the landscape became  quite hilly;  we had to push our bikes up a few of them and this was a state highway.  In spite of it being a state highway, traffic was very low for most of the way to Hannibal. 

  At one point, we saw a beautiful turtle in the middle of the highway.  We noticed it had a clump of leeches on its shell so we euthanized the leeches to help the turtle out as well as carried the turtle the rest of the way over the road.  

 We got a reasonable start today but the hills slowed us down so we made it with not too much time to spare to the Mark Twain Riverboat in Hannibal.  We enjoyed our hour or so on the Mississippi and found it fun to learn a little history & lore of the area and see some sites that Mark Twain used in his novel, just with the names changed.

  We found out that the worst American non-military sinking was a boat that was taking civilians and  released POW's from Andersonville at the end of the Civil War. The  estimate is that over a thousand people died;  just a few less than the Titanic.  

  The average life of a wooden-hulled riverboat at that time was 4 to 5 years and would be lost by either running aground or an engine explosion; it was 2 years less on the Missouri River. Just prior to the Civil War when Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was a river pilot, he made as much annually as the president of the  USA; a pilot on the Missouri made even more as the risks were higher. 

  We also found out that the river was 8 feet higher than normal, and had risen FOUR feet since yesterday! No wonder there was a lot of debris!

  After the boat tour, someone asked where we were biking from. He shared how he and his wife had really enjoyed a combination barge/biking trip in Europe.

  We had originally hoped to camp in Hannibal, but the campground was back a ways in the wrong direction and there was a very big hill to repeat so instead we decided to go forward 21 miles with a favorable wind to Quincy.  We asked someone we met in Hannibal from Quincy if they had any restaurant recommendations and found out that many restaurants in town are closed on Mondays.  We did find an open Korean restaurant with very good food.  We chatted with a local there who ran a marathon in St Louis; he said his legs became like jello as it was lot more hills and steeper ones than what he was used to. 

  Our motel window looks out over the Mississippi with a very beautiful view of the river, the bridges and the sunset.