After we endured our coldest night of the journey, clear skies and increasingly warm weather blessed our thirty-third week of hiking, though we still witnessed the effects of the misty, rainy Missouri weather as we walked along the floodplains of the mighty Mississippi River. We encountered a town, New Valmeyer, created after flooding of Valmeyer led to astronomical insurance rates..
Fortunately, the flooding was not severe as we walked south along the lengthy Bluff Road that sliced between the Mississippi River to the west and limestone bluffs to the east. The bluffs looked brighter than the ones lining the Missouri River, due to the sunny skies. Bright red cardinals continued to conspicuously appear amidst the dull winter vegetation, joined now by turkey vultures, flying and resting high up in the bluffs.
We encountered many dogs on this stretch. Though Cindy loves dogs, she hiked by the side of me away from barking dogs whenever we encountered them. Having encountered black bears under various circumstances, barking dogs did not concern me, aside from getting tired of listening to them.
We passed one home with a bunch of small dogs yapping, calling their owner’s attention towards us. Mary came over to find out what we were doing. That led to a conversation where we learned Mary acquired all the dogs from the humane society. While many people we encountered had rescue dogs, Mary took adopting a step further. She acquired guardianship of two boys unrelated to her, one now eighteen, the other ten. Both their original parents and grandparents were meth users and occasionally in prison. After we continued on hiking, Cindy chatted about Mary being a saint.
On our last afternoon of hiking on Bluff Road, a car stopped to tell us we went beyond our rendezvous point with Ky at a state park. Bob and Joan Reid first brought us back to Ky, then invited us all to stay at his Best Western Reid’s Inn in Chester. That evening Bob took us out to the Harvest House buffet restaurant he owned. He also called the Ad Editor of the local paper to come and do a story on us; I suspect there was an additional, savvy self-interest involved.
In addition to being a savvy Chester businessman, Bob loved his childhood hometown. After our buffet dinner he took us on a ride around town which, considering that Chester is the decidedly proud home of Popeye, was akin to a film studio tour. Murals and statues let tourists know that the Mississippi River was home to the most famous cartoon tug boat.
We headed south from Chester on Illinois 3, which turned out to be the worst stretch of the entire ADT. I thought that would be the case as we were hiking along the road and now in retrospect I can confirm. Mainly coal haulers passed us on this narrow road, sending gusts of wind to blow us off balance. The shoulder sloped treacherously to the side of the road, but our only choices were to either walk with a slant within a very narrow space or to be crushed by a coal hauler. The only good feature of this stretch was a two-seater outhouse at Rockwood Memorial Park, located where we finally and thankfully left Illinois 3.
From there we got onto the Levee Road, where King Coal was still very much in evidence. Mountains of pitch black coal delivered by the coal haulers were loaded onto rail cars of the Union Pacific Railroad. As glimpses of the Mississippi River occasionally came into view we also spotted massive barges carrying coal as well.
Our last town stop along the Mississippi River was Grand Tower, a modern day version of the boom and bust mining towns we encountered in Nevada. A power plant became the main source of jobs and income for Grand Tower, which built up accordingly. Then the plant became fully automated and went from employing four hundred to five people. Not even a government program meant to be a stimulus could reinvigorate the town, according to the hosts we stayed with for two evenings while Ky slack packed us. Grand Tower, like the old Nevada mining towns, provides a cautionary tale about choosing the short term riches of a sugar daddy corporation over the long term stability of diverse, smaller businesses.
Mike Ellet was the mayor of Grand Tower and former park manager for Devil’s Backbone Campground, which marks one end of the River to River Trail we would be hiking on next. His wife Joyce was a nurse who engaged Cindy in “shoptalk” while we were there. Cindy appeared to be completely at ease chatting with Joyce, an unfamiliar person with something in common, more evidence that Cindy was on the mend.
Mike had thru-hiked the River-to-River Trail with mules and welcomed the chance to talk about the trail ahead of us. He warned us about athletic people being surprised by the trail. Considering that we looked like “an old man and a young blonde,” he no doubt thought of us as the next “victims” of surprise. The RtR guidebook supported this cautionary view, informing readers to expect one mph as the pace through the wilderness area the RtR traverses. As someone for whom only White Mountain Trails in New Hampshire limited me to a one mph pace, I just nodded respectfully at the cautions.
We donned our full packs for the River to River Trail, which slices across the southern tip of Illinois to connect the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Cindy and I were glad as always to get back on trail, though this one was officially closed for the season. We could understand why that might be so, as the muddy trail we encountered was vulnerable to erosion. Besides not having much alternative in the midst of a long, cross-country trip, we trusted that being the only hikers on that trail for weeks meant little harm done.
We had three sets of maps to guide us along the RtR Trail. I plotted the official ADT waypoints on maps I printed out with software from National Geographic, one of our sponsors. I also had a Forest Service map and the maps that came with the RtR guidebook. Unfortunately, the three maps did not agree with each other, nor did the actual trail, marked with white blazes on wood nailed to trees, always agreed with the maps. The numbers designating different trails were also nailed to trees, which caused us a bit of consternation when we could not find the trail marked 001 because the marker had been inverted.
Even with the hindrance of different maps, inverted trail markers and muddy trails we hiked at well over one mph. Yet after our first night on the trail a sobering realization came to me. After a week of clear skies, a very light drizzle left us with a thin, brittle sheet of ice on our tent and on the ground. What if instead we had been hit with a New England type ice storm? We have hiked during snowstorms and over crusty, slippery snow, but never over a thick sheet of ice. Under such conditions even one mph might be an unattainable pace.
Occasionally the RtR trail came onto a road. During one such stretch we happened upon Mike Long, a forester out doing some yard work. He invited us into his home where his wife Julia made us a lunch of soup and sandwiches. While there Cindy sat on the floor and played with their three-year-old Amelia. On occasion where we hiked Cindy would confess that she could not wait to have grandchildren. Though Cindy’s brain health had been improving, I watched her play with Amelia with a bit of sadness from wondering what will be.
