Another miserable sleepless night. I slept about an hour and a half, then was awake for four hours and managed to sleep for another hour before dawn. Yeesh.
For breakfast, I walked to a nice bakery and had a delicious pastry loaded with raspberries. Definitely not allowed on the sugar-free diet!
Ryan and Laura picked me up a bit after 11, and we went to Autoworld. Somehow, I didn’t see it yesterday – it’s where I saw an Elise parked across the square from the military museum. Clearly, I only have eyes for Lotus, and didn’t spot that there was a car museum right there.
Autoworld is the Belgian National Car Museum. Their current pop-up exhibit, called “Big In Japan,” is Japanese cars. Somehow, not one of them was JDM (Japanese domestic market). They were all left-hand drive cars. I was mildly surprised and mildly disappointed. They couldn’t find even one JDM car?
The permanent exhibition is a nice collection of cars. Obviously, the majority of cars are European, so I saw quite a few cars that were entirely new to me. But I have seen other examples of many of the more valuable cars here (the pre-war Bugattis and modern Ferraris, for example). I go to a lot of car shows. They had a 1901 Toledo Steam Car, built by bicycle makers.
Hit the Road
The road to Spa – more correctly, the road to Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps – was pretty crowded the entire way. It was a bit more than an hour and a half of mostly rural expressway. We headed to my hotel so I could get checked in, but nobody was there. My reservation confirmation email said check-in starts at 4 pm and we were early, so we went to the track to get checked in for tomorrow with RSR.
That accomplished, we headed to the grandstands at Raidillon. It’s pretty trippy finally being here. Ryan and I are driving on the second day of a two-day event, so there are cars out running on the track. The weather is beautiful, hopefully it will be this nice tomorrow. Watching the cars blast down the hill from La Source, down to Eau Rouge, vaulting up over Raidillon, and disappearing, full throttle echoing up the Kemmel straight was fantastic.
Back at the hotel, there was still no sign of life. The address in the email said the address was 220, which is a restaurant. All the rooms are at 223 and have keypads on them. I was starting to think I wouldn’t be able to get into my room. I was not yet in full-on panic mode.
I phoned the number listed on their website, but it went straight to voicemail. A moment later, a maintenance guy came out the door of 220. He didn’t speak any English, but understood that I wanted to check in. He made a phone call and got through to someone. After a conversation, he handed me his phone.
The nice lady I talked to told me that my room number and code were in an email. I never received any such email. She told me the room number and code and asked when I wanted breakfast tomorrow. It turns out I’m the only guest in the place. I told her I could do without, but she said she’d have breakfast delivered to my room. What time did I want it? As I needed to be at the track at 8, she suggested 7 am.
Disaster averted. What would I have done if I’d been a few minutes earlier or later and not run into the maintenance guy?
On the phone, she told me the code, but the maintenance guy worked the doors for me. I had a little heartburn that there was some trick I missed.
I had a nice dinner out with Ryan and Laura, another traditional Belgian food: Hawaiian Pizza!
No heartburn at all – not from the pizza, and there was no trick to the hotel code.
My first good night’s sleep. I woke up twice, as previous nights, and at 2:00 was worried I’d get a repeat of last night. But all was good, I fell back asleep fairly quickly and slept until 8. I almost never sleep that late.
Today is another day of semi-aimlessly wandering around on foot. Rather than sitting in a restaurant for breakfast, I was looking for a nice bakery. Last night, I thought about that segment of city wall I found and tried to get more info about it. I found that there’s an old gate from that wall serving as a museum, Porte de Hal. Google showed me a bakery between the hotel and there, and off I went.
This is a fairly densely populated area, yet I don’t see too many grocery stores. There are little shops, like convenience stores, but they sell some produce. The only true grocery markets I’ve seen are much smaller than your typical suburban Safeway store, maybe a quarter of the floor space.
Just before I arrived at the bakery, I walked through a small square where they were setting up an outdoor market. Not a farmers’ market; it had a much wider variety of food. Between the market and the bakery, there’s a bar on the corner. It’s 10 am on a Sunday, and two tables on the sidewalk are full of guys drinking beer and singing happy songs.
Porte de Hal was closed. It’s being renovated, but is still open. Except for every other weekend. Evidently, this is every other weekend. Just my luck.
Next, I headed to Parc du Cinquantenaire. The only art in my hotel room is a picture of the arches there. I had no expectations as to what I might find of interest there, but it was somewhere to go. It’s a bit of a hike, but I enjoy a nice hike.
Just before I got there, I found myself outside the House of European History. It’s not on my radar at all. Entry is free, and they give you a tablet and headphones for the self-guided tour. Their exhibits cover European history, focused mostly on recent history. Brussels is the administrative home of the European Union, so it’s natural there’d be a museum focusing on European history after World War II.
It’s in the building of an old dental school. The central staircase features a giant hanging sculpture. It’s hard to describe and nearly impossible to photograph. It is 25 meters tall (82′), made of steel and aluminium. It’s called Voxtex of European History, and rises beside the staircase to the skylight, traversing all six floors of the building. I’d say it looks a bit like a giant squid, but that’s not it. The tentacles are ribbons of metal with letters and words cut out. The ribbons snake into the exhibits on each floor and feature relevant quotations.
Most of the exhibits cover territory I’m already familiar with – the industrial revolutions, the world wars, the cold war, the siege of Sarajevo. Very well done. On my way out, I asked if they had a water fountain. Not one you can drink from – you have to have a bottle. I meant to bring a Nalgene bottle with me, but failed. And I never buy bottled water, so I was without a bottle. I was directed to some vending machines, where I used the wrong one and learned what eau chaude is. I saved the cup. It may come in handy.
There’s a whole side of Brussels that interests me, but that I’ve ignored. NATO headquarters is here, as is the EU headquarters. This museum was a nice little taste of modern history, in contrast to all the 13th-century churches and 17th-century art I’ve been immersing myself in. It was a happy little accident, finding this place.
Only a few minutes after leaving there, I arrived at the Parc. It’s a nice, big park with beautiful trees and landscaping. I headed directly to the arches.
The arches look like many other triumphal arches. I can’t just look at a set of triple arches without going through and looking from the other side. Can you? When I stepped through, I was faced with a bunch of old cannons outside the entrance to the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History. Planes and tanks! Sign. Me. Up.
I could have spent all day in there. I was hoping for a bit more of it to be World War II, but they didn’t make the place to cater to me. The large hall is dedicated to aviation, spanning from the early hot air balloons to relatively modern jets.
I’ve seen a lot of planes. There was a big collection at Falcon Field in Mesa, in hangars next to what used to be the Confederate Air Force. I’ve been to the Pima Air Museum, the Air and Space Museum. Wings Over the Rockies at Lowry. I’d like to go to the National Museum of World War II Aviation in Colorado Springs. So I’ve seen pretty much every kind of plane that I know something about. Here, most of these aircraft were ones I’ve never seen before. But I don’t know anything about them. I don’t know why they’re in a museum. Only a few attracted my attention.
Tanks, on the other hand, I seldom get to see. I want to see tanks! The only WWII tanks were American, which disappointed me a bit. Ohio is loaded with Sherman tanks outside of VFW posts. They have an M-47 Patton. They also have a few German Leopard tanks. These were developed in the mid-1960s, used by the West German army (and Belgian Army, evidently). I was a big fan of these when I was about 10 years old.
These are outside, and the ground had tank tracks on it. I hadn’t thought about it, but you have to keep these things drivable. You don’t have to keep your museum piece Spitfire flyable, but if you can’t drive your tank, you’ll never be able to move it.
They have quite the collection of WWI items, including a few tanks and more types of artillery than I knew existed (yes, I’m prone to exaggeration, but I’m only exaggerating a little). In the technical hall, some exhibits showed many (all?) of the processes and parts required to manufacture sabers, flintlock guns, and rifles. Think “exploded diagram” but with the real parts.
Stumbling across two nice museums. I couldn’t have planned it any better.
As it was a Grand Prix Sunday, my next stop was a sports bar, where I watched the Hungarian Grand Prix and had a couple of beers. I had just stepped in the door, was putting my backpack down at a table with a view of the TV, hadn’t yet gone to the bar, when an older guy berated me in French for not having a beer. Dude, lighten up. Can’t I put my stuff down first?
I slept poorly last night. More precisely, I slept well from 10 pm to 2 am, then not at all from 2 to 6, then well from 6 to 9. I woke up covered in sweat, not at all refreshed. I’m normally up before 7, ready for the day.
Rather than mounting an expedition in search of breakfast, I ate in the hotel. Imagine your basic complimentary motel breakfast in most of America: serve yourself scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, maybe a banana. That was the fare here, except it wasn’t complimentary. When I checked in, I was told breakfast would set me back 23€ per person, or just under 27 bucks. (When I checked out, it turned out to be 18€, or $21.) When I planned the trip, I thought breakfast was included, but even at that, I didn’t plan on eating at the hotel.
Today I widened my radius of exploration by using the subway. First was the National Basilica of the Sacred Heart, or Basilique Nationale du Sacré-Cœur. For some reason, I was thinking this was another Gothic cathedral. I couldn’t have been much more wrong. It was built only a century ago. The cornerstone was laid in 1905, but construction wasn’t completed until after the First World War. It’s not Gothic: it’s Art Deco!
It’s somewhat larger than the two churches I visited yesterday. They claim it’s the fifth-largest church in the world. I know, the internet is never wrong, but various sources I’ve found put it no higher than 8th largest. Back in 1975, I visited St. Isaac’s Cathedral in what was then Leningrad. Through the mists of time and my poor memory, I believe they also claimed it to be the 5th largest. In any event, the Basilica is a significant building, erected at the behest of the King, as a symbol of national pride.
I wouldn’t say the weather was ideal when I arrived there, but I was a bit shocked to step out of the elevator onto the panorama (the walkway around the base of the dome) into a major downpour. Luckily, it was a minor squall and passed after a few minutes.
Next, I went to the Atomium. It was built for the 1958 World’s Fair. Very crowded. I asked for a senior ticket, but she charged me to standard adult fare. Backpacks had to be put into lockers, which were coin-operated. She kindly loaned me a 1€ coin.
I was a bit chagrined to learn that pay toilets are a thing here, particularly as I still haven’t converted any money. Fortunately, the ticket to the Atomium (where toilets cost 0.70€) also includes entry to the Design Museum, where toilets are free.
I don’t know what I was expecting at the Atomium. When you first enter, there are some exhibits telling the story of the 1958 World’s Fair. After that, I don’t know what to make of it. You proceed from escalator to staircase to escalator, moving from one globe to another. There are flashing colored lights and … noises? … electronic music? I was underwhelmed and it’s a mystery to me why it draws such large crowds.
The Design Museum basically had two exhibits: plastics and skateboards. I suspect the plastics exhibit is permanent. The skateboard exhibit is temporary. I found the skateboards more interesting than the plastics, and I’m not particularly interested in skateboards. I was thankful for the free toilet. We take our victories where we find them.
Outside, there are food trucks selling waffles and ice cream. I’ve been using my credit cards the whole time, but these food trucks were the first places I’ve seen where credit cards aren’t accepted. A waffle would have hit the spot right then. They look delicious, served with a dollop of ice cream and drizzled with chocolate syrup. Seeing that having some cash might be handy, I stopped at an ATM in the subway station and got 40€.
After a short break back at the hotel, I went in search of food. My daily wandering took me by the Ferris wheel next to the Palais de Justice. There’s always been a waffle truck there. I elected to go without the ice cream. The waffle was warm, drizzled with chocolate syrup, and served on a piece of waxed paper with a paper towel. It was warm and sticky and quite tasty.
One of the places on my list of potential sights was the Belgian World Beer Experience. I had walked by it the first day I was here. It looked like a bit of a tourist trap. I went in anyway.
It’s housed in the Bourse de Bruxelles building, the former stock exchange. Before going upstairs to learn about beer, you go downstairs for an archeological tour of the site. I didn’t expect that! Archaeologists excavated the site from 1988-2012. In the 13th century, there was a Franciscan church here, with a cemetery. In 1695, Sun King Louis XIV’s troops bombarded Brussels, destroying the nave and the choir down to the foundations.
Legend has it that it’s the burial site of John 1st of Brabant, also known as Gambrinus or Jan Primus. Gambrinus would be St. Gambrinus, who embodied the joyful enjoyment of alcohol, and has even been credited by some with being the inventor of beer.
The beer museum was more interesting and informative than I expected. I learned that hops is a distant cousin of cannabis. One exhibit had funny quotes about beer. Frank Zappa said, “You can’t be a real country without a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some sort of football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” And, from Plato: “He was a wise man who invented beer.”
To top it all off, admission includes a draft beer served on the rooftop terrace. They had about 50 beers to choose from. I picked the Chouffe Cherry. It was very cherry; sweet rather than sour. Not something I’d have on a regular basis, but I enjoyed the change of pace. Sipping my beer, looking out over the old town, I heard more American voices than I had since I got off the plane.
Beer gone, it was 8 o’clock, and time to find dinner. I was hungry, it was late, and I didn’t want to take a lot of time searching for a nice place, so I ended up at the same restaurant as last night – good food, friendly staff, English menu. Why not repeat, as long as I don’t repeat any part of the meal? Instead of the stew, I went for the meatloaf with the mashed potatoes/carrots. After the meatloaf, I asked for their second-best chocolate dessert. They brought out their chocolate cake. Served with a scoop of ice cream and filled with delectable molten chocolate, it hit the sweet spot.
My travels through Brussels may sound a bit … aimless. That’s because they more or less were aimless. I had a short list of sights that I thought might be worthwhile, but I didn’t have anything like an itinerary or a plan. If I went everywhere on the list, great. I had no doubt I’d like places that weren’t on the list if I just stumbled upon them. And, with only a handful of days to explore, I would certainly get back home and think, “I should have gone there!” So my general plan was to begin each day with a starting place, then improvise after that.
I picked my hotel because it’s in a network where I can use some points to cut a few Euros off the daily bill. It fit my budget, and it’s close enough to the center of the city that I could get around on foot. For a budget place, it’s in a nice neighborhood. The neighbor across the street is the Mission of the State of Qatar. A block away, there’s a very upscale hotel that I passed by every day. Often, a Ferrari was in the driveway. Once, a Maybach was parked out front.
August 1
My first destination today was the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula. Amazing building. Construction began in the 11th century, and was largely complete in its current Gothic form by the 16th. As the national church of Belgium and the Primate of Belgium’s official seat, it frequently hosts royal weddings, state funerals, and other official ceremonies.
There are public parks all over the city. Some are tiny, some are significant. After the cathedral, I came upon one that was a little different than other city parks I’ve seen. City parks are all very well-manicured. This little park was a bit on the “wild” side – very little sign of curation other than the fountain and the paths.
Next, the sidewalk led me to the Oldmasters Museum, or Musée Old Master. It concentrates on works produced from the 15th to the 18th centuries. The museum was founded by Napoleon in 1801 and includes many artworks seized from religious institutions. This is an all too common story of museums. It’s definitely not good that museums all over the world are filled with stolen goods, but at least these artifacts are now kept in controlled environments for proper preservation (and sometimes restoration) and that they’re available to the public.
The temporary exhibit is Rene Magritte. Interesting work. I guess he did a lot of wordplay. I didn’t see a work’s title that matched the work. It’s like he played games in naming things. I saw one Magritte piece in their permanent collection – a bowler hat with a light bulb on the front. Not a painting, an actual hat with an actual lightbulb.
Magritte, like many artists, made numerous variations of many of his works. He had one, The Treachery of Images, that’s a painting of a pipe with the caption “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (this is not a pipe). The 1929 version of this is in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In this exhibit, there’s one from 1962 called The Tune and also the Words. This exhibit also has a few other variations, including one that’s officially untitled, but is called “The Sexual Pipe”, where the stem is a phallus. He also had a thing about painting men in bowler hats, and a series of landscapes derived from an Edgar Allan Poe story I’ve never read called The Domain of Arnheim. Certain images repeat throughout much of his work, such as eggs or white balls with black equators.
The Old Masters collection is about what I expected – mostly religious. One hall was filled with giant pieces. I can only imagine how much work went into all of these. Some of them seemed somewhat anachronistic. I think of paintings of anthropomorphic landscapes as being a modern or surrealist thing, but there are a few here from the 16th century.
I had lunch at a little brew pub. I had two different beers, both tasty. I asked the bartender for a lunch recommendation. He suggested the Salade du maraîcher. I had no idea what it was; I’d never heard of it. Through the power of the internet, as I write this many days later, I’ve learned it simply means “market gardener’s salad.” I ate it without knowing even what was in it. Among other ingredients it was beefsteak tomatoes, grilled zucchini, roasted garlic, feta cheese, purple basil sauce, and a slice of sourdough bread.
After lunch, I found myself at another church, Église Notre-Dame de la Chapelle, or Church of Our Lady of the Chapel. It’s not quite as large as St. Gudula, and doesn’t look to get as much funding for upkeep, but it also doesn’t get the tourist traffic. This one was built between the 12th and 13th centuries. This church is only a kilometer (0.6 miles) apart. They’re significant structures. From what I can tell, the population of Brussels at that time was perhaps 30,000.
Both of these churches were built about the same time as the city was being enclosed by walls. I only found one small piece of the old wall (not that I was looking for it), and the museum about the wall was closed when I went. The original walls were about two and a half miles long. The defensive walls, though larger than the churches, were crude in comparison, as befits their purpose. If you think of wealth as being the accumulated surplus of production beyond subsistence, it seems inescapable that the vast majority of wealth went to the Church.
As I said earlier, I didn’t go to Belgium to eat tacos. I wanted to try at least a few traditional Belgian dishes. My very limited research suggested mussels, or beef stew, or meatloaf with mashed potatoes and carrots. And, of course, there are waffles and frites. And chocolate. At the hotel, I asked the desk clerk if he could recommend a nearby restaurant with good desserts. He wasn’t much help – he said I should find a restaurant with pictures on the menu. It’s not the worst advice for a monoglot American tourist, but I’m somewhat willing to be daring. He did, though, suggest I try something in the Sablon, a neighborhood of chic bars, fashionable restaurants, and chocolate shops near Central Place.
So I basically wandered around the Sablon for an hour, where I came across a place serving Belgian specialties that had an English menu. I had the beef stew. It was delicious. The typical beef stew I’m familiar with always has potatoes, onions, and carrots. This was just beef, and is made with beer. The side dish for the stew was frites. They recommended beer pairings with all their entrees. For dessert, I asked for their best chocolate dish. It was a mousse. Delightful!
Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula
One of the stained glass windows
Interior
Exterior, side view
“The Tune and also the Words”
Big Old Masters
Église Notre-Dame de la Chapelle
Fragment of Ancient City Wall
On Blending In
I recently watched a movie where the characters were Americans in Europe, on the run from the bad guys. One character told the other to lose the backpack and baseball cap so he wouldn’t look like an obvious American. Here in Brussels, if you want to blend in as a local, a backpack and baseball cap are good, as long as the cap is for the New York Yankees or the Los Angeles Dodgers. Also, feel free to wear a t-shirt with an American city name on it (New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago) or something like “East River” or “West Coast California”. But to seal the deal, to really fit in as a Bruxellois, smoke a cigarette.
I carried my backpack, rain jacket and umbrella in it, and wore my baseball cap. I wore polo shirts instead of t-shirts, and I don’t smoke. But there was no hiding the fact that I’m an American every time I opened my mouth to speak.
Two days of hanging around the race track wasn’t enough for me. The Chin event was over, but I still needed to go to the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum.
The museum is best known for its motorcycles. They have over 1600 bikes in their collection, with over 900 on display. But that’s not why I wanted to wander through the place. You see, it also happens to have the world’s largest collection of Lotus race cars. Throw in die-cast cars, wooden toy cars and trucks, outboard boat motors, and a lawn mower and you have a pretty interesting way to spend a few hours.
Whereas the Presidential museums I visited on this trip both opened at 9:00 am, Barber doesn’t let you in until 10. Or so says the sign on the door and their website. I didn’t have anything better to do, so I got there a little early. I was hoping they’d let me drive around part of the perimeter road so I could look for more treasures. There wasn’t anybody at the gate to ask, and they had the road coned off. So I parked at the museum.
To the right of the main entrance, they have a very striking trio of sculptures that make up one piece. Is there a sculpture-oriented word equivalent to triptych? It’s called “The Chase”, and the plaque says it indicates “the super-human power and sense of achievement that one experiences on the track.” They have a smaller version of at least one of the figures on display inside.
After taking a few photos, I started walking back to my car. A guy came out the museum doors and called to me, “Come on in! We’re open!” It was 9:38. This was good news. After the museum, I’m driving to Atlanta. I had been going back and forth about whether I’d have enough time to take the back roads or I’d have to violate Rule #1. Extra time in hand is good.
When I paid for admission, the cashier told me that I was in luck – Indycar was here at the track doing some testing.
They tell everybody to start touring the museum from the top down. Take the elevator up to the fifth floor, then walk down the spiral ramp to each lower floor.
The number of motorcycles there is ridiculous. I’m not particularly interested in motorcycles, so I was a bit overwhelmed. Bikes from World War II, Italian Vespas, a bike with a wooden sidecar. I wandered randomly, perhaps working down to the cars a bit quicker than I should have.
The Chase
Lotsa Lotus
Model Lotus
Vincent Lawnmower. “Vincent” as in “Vincent Black Lightning”
Hanging Lady
Graham Rahal
Marcus Armstrong
Dragonflies
Fittipaldi fire
I’ve seen large numbers of Lotus before. At the two LOGs I attended, we had more than a hundred, almost all of them road cars. At the F1 race I attended, they had a bunch of classic Lotus F1 cars that ran in a vintage race. But the collection at Barber is impressive for its breadth. I don’t think any of it was post-Chapman, and a few of the very earliest models were reproductions, but they damn near had one of everything that raced. They even had the bicycle.
After checking out the Lotus collection, I wandered out toward the track. From the museum, you can go across the first bridge (the second when you’re on the track), down to a path through the woods in the infield, and then up to the second bridge (the bridge with the hanging lady). The bridges have clear sections in the walkway – you can look straight down onto the track.
Indycars do a lap here as fast as 1:06. That means, if I were to be on the track for a half-hour session with an Indycar, he’d pass me nine or ten times.
I chatted with a couple of guys who come to the Indycar race every year. They said, “You can’t see it from here, but over there,” they pointed vaguely to the woods, “some big ants are carrying off a motorcycle.” Then we got to see Pietro Fittipaldi’s car catch on fire. He was frantically waving his arms for somebody to come to extinguish the fire, but it took a couple of minutes for the trucks to start rolling. He’s the grandson of Lotus F1 champ Emerson Fittipaldi.
After stopping by the gift shop to buy the obligatory t-shirt, I hit the road. I had plenty of time to take the back roads for a pleasant drive through the Alabama and Georgia countryside. I didn’t have much traffic until the last forty minutes or so, as I got near Atlanta.
If you’re a motorcycle lover or a fan of Lotus, the museum is worth the visit.
Today’s diversion is a visit to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum. It doesn’t open until 9:00, so I could sleep in a little.
The free breakfast cost too much. Yesterday, at the bad motel, at least I got a bagel with cream cheese. This morning, no such luck. My choices were cold cereal or yogurt with lots of sugar. I tried the biscuits and sausage gravy. The biscuits were hard. The sausage gravy may have been vegan. After two bites, I tossed it. The woman at the next table made eye contact with me, chuckled, and nodded.
After the non-breakfast I headed out, stopping to fill the tank on my way to the museum. I got there just as the doors opened. There was just one problem, though: I couldn’t lock the car. It acted like it locked, it made the right noises in the right sequence, but after a few seconds, the alarm gave a steady beep. I’m pretty sure that’s what it does if I try to lock it with the boot open, or a door. I opened and closed the doors and boot lid and tried again with the same result.
That’s just great. I have the passenger seat and footwell filled with stuff including a laptop, some tools, and all the cameras. In theory, I could repack the car to have the valuables in the boot, but something will still be in the unlocked cabin. When I’m just driving around town, I almost never lock it, as I often have the top off, and I seldom carry anything. But road trips are a different kettle of fish.
After my third unsuccessful round of opening and closing the doors and boot lid, one of the groundskeepers rolled up in his cart. He asked the usual questions about the car, including “What kind of car is it?”. He was not the first I’ve talked to on this trip who’d never heard of Lotus and would not be the last. I answered all his questions, then told him that I was having trouble locking it.
He said, “Go visit the museum. I’m going to be working right over here all morning cleaning up from the storm. I’ll keep an eye on it.” That was very kind of him. I have a blue tarp that I use to keep everything on the passenger side covered up.
I have no idea why it’s failing. One possibility is damage from the collision. I don’t think that’s the case, but it’s possible. Another is something’s wet. I drove through 3 hours of rain, and it rained most of the night, so who knows? My tape job is holding up to the weather, still looking good. I think I have enough tape left to redo it if I have to.
The Clinton Presidential Park bridge crosses the Arkansas River
Bill’s ride
Bill’s WFH office
What Bill did on my 34th b-day
Each globe has a theme
The Clinton Museum is the largest of the National Archives Presidential Museums. At least, according to the Clinton Museum folks. They admit that Reagan’s is bigger if you include the hanger that holds Air Force One and Marine 1. Not that it matters who’s is bigger.
The grounds here are pretty nice, but the rain had started up again so I didn’t wander around. One of the things a President has to do these days when he gets the job is to decide where he’s going to be buried. While I was looking out an upper-story window at the grounds, a worker pointed out where Bill and Hillary will reside after shuffling off this mortal coil.
When I visit these Presidential museums, I always look for a life-sized statue so I can get a selfie. Ike was on a pedestal, and I figured it would be poor form to climb it for a photo. There is no statue of Clinton here.
The price I paid for going to the museum was having to trade some back roads for interstate. My route started with sixty miles of interstate and ended with another hundred and fifty, making it just a tad over half the total mileage. Had I taken interstates the whole way, I’d have saved a few minutes but gone farther, going through Memphis. The middle section took me through the backwoods of Mississippi.
It was still raining when I got off the superslab. The first thing I noticed was that there wasn’t nearly as much standing water as on the interstate. The two-lane roads are crowned much better, with water flowing from the middle out. Much better drainage than the interstate. And with so much less traffic, I wasn’t constantly driving through somebody else’s spray.
I crossed the Mississippi River on US 49, over an impressive old girder bridge. I’d have loved to have stuck the 360 camera out the window, but it was raining. Too, the road on the bridge is in rough shape. It was definitely two-hands-on-the-wheel rough.
Just as on many of my other trips, I saw quite a few flooded fields. Is it always flooding somewhere in the Midwest when I’m driving through, or is it just where I go?
I was on a mix of roads, from four-lane divided highway down to a stretch of state highway with neither speed limit signs nor a centerline. Once the rain stopped, it was a pleasant drive.
This narrowest, least-traveled road alternated between small cultivated fields and stands of trees. There were quite a few run-down, abandoned-looking shacks along the road. Where the road went through the woods, the trees made an archway over the road. In one place where trees arched the road, I spotted a doll hanging in a tree, lynched. Right above my head. Maybe two feet tall. I couldn’t tell if the doll was black. I have a guess based on nothing more than stereotypes.
I was surprised at the lack of restaurants on my backroads drive. I had the same thing last year in Missouri, but I was on a number of county roads. Today, I was on state routes and US highways – no county roads. I was in this foodless zone from about eleven to after two. Maybe I was still feeling good from last night’s steak, but I wasn’t particularly hungry for any interstate fast food. I powered on to the motel.
The last two hours of the drive were dry. I basically ran a 75-mile-an-hour blow-dryer on the car for two hours. I still can’t lock the car. This does not bother me at all until my return trip. But I don’t think I’m comfortable leaving everything in an unlocked car while I wander around the Shiloh battlefield and Indian mounds. I doubt I’ll be able to count on the kindness of groundskeepers to keep an eye on my car. Driving back with no diversions means I’d be able to trade more interstate for back roads.
Dinner was at a little Mexican place next to the motel. It’s in a former fast-food building. There’s parallel parking where the drive-thru was. The place was busy, and it seemed like everybody knew each other. I had a chimichanga and a beer.
The first order of business was to find a hardware store that might have some heavy-duty clear waterproof tape so I could make a “repair”. Abilene has no Home Depot or Lowes, but there is an old-school hardware store downtown. I’m trying to think of the last time I set foot in a hardware store that wasn’t part of a giant chain. The building was probably 125 or 150 years old. They had some T-Rex tape which fit the bill perfectly.
Downtown Abilene is a pile of brick buildings a couple of blocks deep on the north side of about a quarter of a mile of railroad tracks. Ike’s place is a few blocks away on the other side of the tracks.
The Eisenhower Museum is the fourth Presidential Museum I’ve been to. Turns out, you can get a National Archives passport and get it stamped at the museums. I’ve been to three of the first four. I mentioned this to the ticket taker, adding, “I’ve been to Monticello, too.”
“That’s just a residence,” she sniffed.
The museum itself is about on par with Hoover and Truman. World War II gets the most emphasis, with a pretty good general overview of the war in Europe and North Africa.
I don’t know how many of the Museums have the gravesites on the grounds. Ike and Mamie are in a little chapel next to the visitor’s center. It’s not really a chapel, though. Officially it’s the Place of Meditation. His boyhood home is there as well, but I didn’t tour it.
These days it seems each President is set on making a grander statement with his library than any of his predecessors, so the modern ones are in “statement” buildings surrounded by elaborate grounds. The buildings here are old school – utilitarian, brick, more modern than downtown Abilene, but not out of place. The grounds, too, are not great. The lawn is brown, and there’s not much more than lawn. It looks barren.
They’re working on the road in front of the grounds, and the fountain in front of the chapel is being renovated. There’s a sign to that effect, but the sign is the only sign of renovation.
Exiting the museum parking lot, I headed south on KS 19 to start my great zig-zag, south then east, south then east to Little Rock.
Also in the motel parking lot
My tape repair
The Eisenhower residence, now ADA compliant!
Ike’s wartime Cadillac
Model of the Normandy Mulberry Harbor
Khruschev’s portable liqour cabinet
Really? (A campaign button)
Ike stands proud
Ike lies in peace
Most of the day was spent on back roads, but the last three hours were on the Interstate. It was the longest stretch of Interstate for the whole trip. It was harrowing. I don’t know if it was the same storm that dropped a foot and a half of snow at home, but for three hours I drove through rain. Torrents of rain. It was a Biblical storm. I ran the wipers on full-blast, with the defogger on high. Sheets of water ran across the road. A light car with big tires is a good recipe for hydroplaning. Quite often, the car would be a boat for ten or fifteen feet. I wasn’t the slowest vehicle on the road, but it was close. When the big rigs passed me, they threw up so much spray I couldn’t see the cabs of the trucks.
One particularly memorable moment came on a slight bend to the left. The whole road was banked, and water ran in sheets across it. The water wasn’t just ten or fifteen feet across. It looked endless. I added steering angle, but the car kept going straight. It seemed to take forever.
Other drivers were having difficulty, too. There was a jack-knifed big rig on the other side of the highway, then an SUV in the center median, and then three or four emergency vehicles all on the other side.
In the middle of this maelstrom, Google Maps decided I needed to concentrate on navigation instead of the weather. It directed me to get off the Interstate. It didn’t seem right to me, but I obeyed our AI overlords. In the end, it sent me on a six-mile loop back to the same spot that I got off the Interstate. Why the heck did it do this? Does Maps hallucinate now?
Oddly, this may have been a good thing. The storm was getting worse, but now I was going slower and could find a safe place to pull off the road if need be. It started to hail. My defogger could no longer keep the inside of the windshield clear. I pulled over and stopped. I had paper towels with me, so I dried the inside of the windshield. Four or five times.
The rain finally mellowed considerably, and I got back on the interstate, but it didn’t stop until I was close to the motel. It was an intense and exhausting drive.
After checking in to the motel, I wanted a beer. So I walked across a couple of parking lots to the Outback Steakhouse and had a “tall blonde” (a 22 oz. blonde ale), a petite filet with a loaded baked potato, and a house salad. The meal was nearly as much as my room for the night.
Not long after I got back to the motel, the rain started again and tornado sirens started to wail. I checked the news for information and learned that there had been a tornado a few hours earlier, near my route. Fun stuff!
When I went to the car at 9:15, the tornado sirens were wailing again. The rain really started coming down at around 10; more thunder and lightning. Probably the same band of storms I drove through, only now getting here.
Throughout this ordeal, I’ve had a long list of people who have been giving me suggestions as to how to solve the issue. In addition to all my running around yesterday, a Denver friend posted my dilemma on LotusTalk seeking answers. I appreciate that so many people have tried to help. It’s tough, though, given my ignorance, ineptitude, and lack of tools. This morning I followed a few of their suggestions but still no joy.
The original plan for this trip had me making some side trips for sightseeing, but my time has been consumed and I’m not really willing to rely on the car for unnecessary excursions. I was going to check out Andersonville (a notorious Civil War POW camp) and the Jimmy Carter presidential library while in Atlanta, but I’ve sidelined these. So it goes.
After lunch, Jayne suggested we take a short hike. I thought it a great idea, so we piled into her Jeep and she drove us to Sawnee Mountain where we hiked up to Indian Seats, an overlook that provides views of the distant rolling ridgeline of the Blue Ridge Mountains. AtlantaTrails.com describes the view as “breathtaking”. It’s a nice view but I’m not sure it reaches breathtaking status.
The “breathtaking” view of the distant Blue Ridge Mountains.
After the short but welcome hike, Jayne and Dan treated me to a nice dinner at the local brew pub. I had the Go Bleu! burger with a pint of Cherry Limeade, a sour Berliner Weisse. Good stuff.
April 13
I asked Jayne what she had going on today and when she said “nothing”, I suggested we go visit the Jimmy Carter Museum and Library. She was up for it, so off we went. It was rainy and a bit dreary, but that’s not a bad sort of day to wander through a museum. At least I get to hit one of my Atlanta targets.
This is the third presidential museum I’ve visited. This one was a different experience for me for a few reasons. Both Hoover and Truman were before my time, and I’ve read whole-life biographies of both of them. I haven’t gotten to read a Carter bio yet, but even if I wasn’t quite an adult when he was elected, I remember most of the events that are chronicled by the exhibits while I don’t have much of an idea about Carter’s life before the presidency.
The Hoover Museum lacks a reproduction of the oval office. Both Truman and Carter do have that room in their museums and I was a bit surprised at how different they are. Aside from the shape of the room and the fireplace, there was nothing that was the same.
The grounds of the museum and library are beautiful. It may have been a nice sort of day to wander a museum, but I’d have liked to have taken a walk outside. Oh, and that’s one more difference between this museum and the other two: Carter is still alive as I write this and so he isn’t buried here (and I don’t know whether he will be buried here in the end or not).
At the entrance
Some feel Carter was a bust
Carter’s Oval Office
Tonight I had dinner with a few local Lotus folks. I had the pleasure of meeting Doug, Mick, and Bob. I had no idea when I suggested getting together for dinner that I’d be visiting with a couple of Lotus Ltd bigwigs! We shared a number of war stories. There was also a bit of discussion of this year’s LOG in Knoxville. It sounded almost as if Doug was trying to talk me into making another trip this way in September.
I had the filet mignon with a loaded baked potato, a side salad, and a large Sam Adams beer. The rest of the trip will be more Subway and Wendy’s than brew pubs and steakhouses.
I reached out to the folks at Chin Track Days to cancel my entry at Barber and also canceled my reservation at the motel near the track. After checking out the weather report for the next few days, I’ve decided to leave here Saturday morning for a two-day Rule #1 violation and skedaddle on home.
Not knowing what’s causing the fuse to blow, I’m a bit concerned that I might possibly be doing some damage to the motor. My other obvious choices are to leave the car here at the Lotus dealer for them to fix (necessitating a round-trip flight), have the car shipped home, or rent a U-Haul to tow it home. I made a half-hearted search for someone to ship it but didn’t find anybody that went from here to there. I’m not at all enamored with the U-Haul option, and, frankly, I’d rather have the work done by someone who has worked on my car before and who is local to me.
Tomorrow I should stop by an auto parts store and get some more spare fuses.
April 14
Today was pretty much a “zero” day. I went nowhere, did nothing. Well, I did make it to the auto parts store for spare fuses. I did a little planning for the trip home: where to spend the night, whether to try to shoehorn in a visit to the Eisenhower Museum or not. Oh, and Jayne and Dan and I went out to eat at a Mexican place. I had some enchiladas and a beer at the CT Cantina & Taqueria. The enchiladas were quite tasty.
Working on the assumption that I would, indeed, make it home sometime on Sunday, I made an appointment to get the car fixed. My man Ryan says he’s “excited to look at it and hopefully, it will be a quick turnaround!” I love his confidence! I gather that he’s booked up until June and he’s doing me a big solid by squeezing me in. He says he’s going to work evenings. I have no idea what I’ve done to deserve the special treatment, but it’s much appreciated.
I was hoping to get out of the hotel by 7:45 with the idea I’d be at the Truman Library when they open. As it was, nature and technology threw up some roadblocks and I didn’t hit the road until a bit after 8.
Because I charge the phone all day while driving, I didn’t bother to plug it in overnight. When I got to the car, it was down to about 17%. When I fired up the car, I plugged both the phone and the iPod into the charger. The iPod told me it was charging, but the phone didn’t. The cigarette lighter port is a bit janky. Someone on Lotus Talk replaced the cigarette lighter with a dual USB charger. It looks like a simple mod that would mean I would no longer need to fiddle with the stock one, and I’d not have to worry about it not charging when I assume it is. So, naturally, I at first thought I just needed to “jiggle the handle”. But there was no joy.
By the time I arrived at the Truman Library, we were down to 8 or 9%. I grabbed the plug-in adapter and went inside looking for an electrical outlet. The guard pointed me to one in the corner near his station and I plugged in there. Still no joy. Now I was wondering if it was the phone or the cable. Everything worked fine yesterday. Why does it fail now? What have I done to anger the godz?
I often complain about the fragility of our technological times. This is a perfect case. I have very little battery in an unfamiliar city. What do I do with a dead battery? It’s a sort of range anxiety. Drive around randomly looking for a Verizon store? Sheesh.
The Truman Library
The Truman Library was the first of the presidential libraries. This is the second presidential library I’ve visited. Hoover’s was first. They’re very similar: a museum that covers the man’s entire life and is open to the public, and a library that is used by researchers that the public doesn’t get to see. And, naturally, there’s a gift shop as well. As with the Hoover library, Truman’s also includes the grave site.
I made my way through the place a bit more quickly than I anticipated. I’d allowed as much as three hours (cut a few minutes short by my late start) but was done in about half the time. I didn’t spend a lot of time reading about Truman’s history as I’ve read quite a bit about him already. Rather than reading all the material, I concentrated on viewing the various artifacts.
I think it’s a very nice museum. Anybody who doesn’t already know his story can learn all the important bits. There are quite a few videos to watch and a large number of text-heavy exhibits. There is quite a bit more in Truman’s museum than in Hoover’s. Here, there’s a reproduction Oval Office in the basement. Hoover didn’t have one.
Welcome!
Thomas Hart Benton mural
Harry liked his tropical shirts
Truman’s Oval Office
1941 Chrysler Royal Club Coupe
Bess and Harry
Eternal flame self-portrait
The Cable
After enjoying the museum and the garden, I went back to the car and dug through my “bag of tricks”, a heavy-duty quart-sized ziplock bag full of cords and adapters. I sadly neglected to bring another phone cable, but I was pleasantly surprised that the cable for the GoPro Max fits. Plugged it in and it started to charge.
However, the GoPro cable is much too short for me to have the phone charging when it’s mounted on my dash. That’s just not going to work. I need a longer cable. I went to a Verizon store where I knew for sure I could get something that would work but also knew I’d spend two or three times what I’d pay at a Best Buy or equivalent. I am now the proud owner of a new 6’ cable that cost $25. The whole cable thing stressed me out more than it should have.
By now it was lunchtime, so I stopped and grabbed a sandwich for the road.
The Drive
I’ve gone on about the options Google gives us for navigation. For these cross-country trips, I always check the boxes for “No Tolls” and “No Highways”. “No Tolls” is pretty straightforward and unambiguous. “No Highways”, on the other hand, isn’t so simple. In Colorado and points west, it is my experience that “No Highways” is functionally equivalent to “No Interstates”, which is actually what I’m after. Google’s idea of “No Highways” isn’t very clear to me. It could mean that it avoids any multi-lane road with limited access, but I think it’s rather more restrictive than that.
In any event, knowing I’d be directed on roads often smaller than strictly necessary, I kept the “No Highways” option on and set out. I also knew that the drive time difference between highways and no highways would be significantly greater than it was yesterday. But I didn’t have far to go, so I wasn’t in any particular hurry. I’m much happier getting away from the big trucks and the traffic, getting off the beaten path, and getting (I think) a much better view of the countryside.
Using “No Highways” in Kansas still allowed me to use national highways (primarily US 36). On these roads, you pass through all the little towns between where you start and where you end. In Missouri and Arkansas, though, using “No Highways” tends to take you around all the little towns. Which also means you don’t drive past any gas stations.
I had a little “fun” trying to find a gas station. I pulled over and searched for gas stations, but none were on my route. The nearest, Google said, involved backtracking 17 miles. The best would be the one not far off my route 32 miles away. I was a bit surprised that there are no gas stations for 50 miles. Truly, these are the back roads.
About 10 miles later I spotted a Casey’s General Store a bit down a crossroad. Does Google not recognize Casey’s as being gas stations? I admit they’re not my first choice, as they don’t sell premium, but I figure low octane is better than no octane, so I filled up anyway. I’ll burn all the low-octane fuel off before lunch tomorrow.
The Geography
The first few miles of road after leaving Atchison follow the Missouri River. Signs along the road identify it as part of the Lewis and Clark Trail. On my Oregon trip a decade ago (!), I followed a significant portion of their travels. Today, it was just a few miles.
Once I got a short distance east of the river, my route was made up of an alphabet soup of backroads: Highway A, Highway H, Highway W, and so on. All of these letter routes were nice pavement (albeit so narrow they don’t have shoulders), 55 mph speed limits, and almost zero traffic.
Much of my route was on the western edge of a plateau. I’d traverse a few miles of flat agricultural land on an arrow-straight road, then drop off the plateau into a valley or ravine. In these ravines, the road becomes a Lotus road: twisting and turning, rising and falling. At times the ups and downs were like bunny hops on a roller coaster. I was tempted to add a little speed in these places, but there were far too many blind crests. There were a number of signs warning me to share the road with the horse-and-buggy set. I’d have hated to crest a hill with a steep descent only to find a buggy.
These bottom lands held other potential issues as well. Not actual issues now, but they probably were when I passed through Missouri a few years ago. These letter routes feature almost no cut and fill. That is, they’re pretty much at grade level. Grade level in the bottoms means “potentially flooded”. More than a dozen times I saw signs warning that the road may be impassable. These are permanent signs, not temporary ones that I’ve often seen when some side roads are actually flooded. In addition to the warning signs well in advance of the potential danger, they had a number of amber-colored signs that would show how deep the water is in the case that it’s actually flooded. All these signs could indicate depths of as much as 5 feet. I wonder how often the signs are totally submerged.
This up-and-down, on the plateau and in the bottoms, continued until nearly the Arkansas border, where the plateau seemed to end. Coincidentally, that’s when even these back roads started to see traffic. I was nearing Bentonville.
I’m not a farmer, and I’m unable to identify most of the crops I drive past, particularly this early in the season. Like any second grader, I can spot corn and wheat but anything else is a mystery to me.
A fair amount of land was devoted to livestock rather than crops. In Kansas, the cattle were all in the typical industrial feedlots, cattle shoulder to shoulder at the trough and manure piled ten or more feet high. Here in this part of Missouri, there are a lot of cattle, but they’re all grass-fed. Not nearly as many cattle per acre, but probably making for better beef.
I don’t know much about chicken farming. I’ve seen some documentaries about it, and how the three or four giant chicken companies have transformed the industry. I think I saw a few of these modern chicken farms. Each had between four and ten long, low buildings with ventilation fans on each end, and all the driveways and buildings festooned with “No Trespassing” signs.
Most of the roadside billboards in Kansas were selling Jesus and advocating against abortion. In Missouri, it’s Trump instead of Jesus and unborn babies. In this part of Missouri, you can’t go more than a few rural miles without seeing Trump flags. It seems no Trump supporter in these parts is satisfied with a single flag. It’s four or five or six at a time: “Trump 2020”, “Make America Great Again”, “Let’s Go Brandon”.
Everywhere I stopped, people were friendly and curious.
Slightly late start to the day. On weekends the hotel starts breakfast at 7 instead of 6. My plan was to have the car loaded before 7 so I could be out as early as possible without skipping breakfast but my route planning took a bit longer than expected.
First leg of the trip was to Clinton, Iowa, where I wanted to take a short break at a park by the Mississippi River. I took two lane roads almost the entire way; very easy driving. The park in Clinton was a hive of activity with some softball games going on. I walked maybe a half mile down the river, then back. US 30 crosses the river on a suspension bridge and the rail bridge is almost at the water line. It’s one of those bridges that has a center-pivot to let river traffic go by. I didn’t see this one in operation, but later when I crossed the Missouri I saw a rail bridge pivoted and open to river traffic.
Riverview Park, Clinton, IA
From the satellite photos, this little lighthouse is generally 70 or 80 feet from the water and there are four or five more light posts that are submerged. Clearly, the levees here are high enough to handle a lot more water. But if this were to be breached, the major part of this little town would be submerged.
US 30 bridge, railroad bridge, at Clinton
The next leg of my trip was from Clinton to West Branch for a quick visit to the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum. Again, two lane roads, this time almost all state routes rather than US highways. I don’t think I had to pass anybody the whole way from Naperville, other than in the towns. I’m sure I’m sounding like a broken record when I say how much more I prefer the small roads to the interstates.
I didn’t spend a lot of time at the library. I watched the film that they show hourly and toured the exhibits in the museum. And, of course, the gift shop. For some reason, they have a bunch of trinkets related to ancient Egypt. I don’t recall Hoover having any connections, but I could be forgetting. In the museum was a hunk of the Berlin wall. Again, I’m pretty sure he had no specific connection to the Berlin wall, but it was cool to see it. In general, I don’t go around touching museum exhibits, but I couldn’t resist this time.
Most of the building is off-limits to the public, so I had to ask: If I were to be writing a book about, say, Belgian relief, could I get access to the library? The answer was that all I’d need to do is get a research license, which is about as hard to obtain as a library card. In the mean time, I was free to ask any of the staff researchers questions and they’d do their best to respond. Interesting. Not that I’m planning on writing about Hoover. Or anybody else, for that matter.
Hoover grave site
The Hoover library is only a few hundred yards from I-80. I’ve driven by here many times and never bothered to stop. Or even notice how close it was. Add this to the long list of places I ignored because I was in too big of a hurry on the Interstate. The more I avoid those roads, the happier I am.
Third leg of the day was from West Branch southwest to join US 36 somewhere in Missouri, then as far west as I could get. I had the endpoint tentatively at Bethany, Missouri. I reached Bethany before 6:00pm; clearly too early to stop. In my first iteration of the plan, weeks ago, I was looking at St. Joseph. As it turns out, I made it to Hiawatha, Kansas, about forty miles farther.
One of the reasons I don’t drive after dark is the danger of animals. This was illustrated perfectly just a few miles before Hiawatha. I came upon what I thought was debris in my lane. It wasn’t obvious to me at first what it was. Then I saw it was moving. Slowly. It was a good sized turtle, moving from left to right and about where my drivers side tires belonged. I avoided it, and the smaller turtle a few yards past it, which had almost reached the shoulder. I sure hope they both made it. Frankly, I’m a bit amazed they didn’t get clobbered by the clump of traffic about a quarter mile ahead of me: two semis, two tour buses, a motorhome, and two cars. I have no idea how they all managed to miss both turtles.
My minor irritations with technology continued. As soon as I pulled up to the hotel, my phone decided it didn’t want to talk to anybody. I had no cell service and no GPS. At first I thought it was just the cell service that was lacking. But I saw other people yakking on their phones and spotted a cell tower a short distance away. All was good after rebooting the phone. I guess the day wouldn’t have been complete without some sort of technical glitch.
One of the key events of Herbert Hoover’s tenure as Secretary of
Commerce was his relief work in the aftermath of the Great
Mississippi Flood of 1927. This was the most destructive river flood
in the history of the United States. Twenty seven thousand square
miles of land was inundated and 630,000 people were displaced from
their homes. To try to prevent future floods, the federal government
created the world’s longest system of levees and floodways.
Yesterday, one of these levees failed in the West Quincy area, and
other levees were breached along the Arkansas river as well. Luckily,
I was in neither of those places and saw nothing so dramatic.
However, I did drive by a huge amount of acreage that was under
water. Not being from the area, I can’t look at a river and tell if
it’s high compared to other severe flooding years, but every river
I saw looked very high. At Clinton, all the access stairs leading
down to the river were closed, and lampposts on the river side of the
levee were under water.
In Missouri, just east of the Mississippi, there’s the Platte River. This is not the same one that flows through Denver an on through Nebraska. I didn’t know there was another one. This one is sometimes called the Little Platte River. This Platte was well out of its banks, flooding perhaps a half mile on each side of the river. Most of Iowa and Missouri that I traversed through the day was rolling terrain, so there wasn’t much flooding to see. But quite a bit of land on the Kansas side of the Missouri is flooded as well as large areas of Illinois that I drove through. Of course, I also mentioned flooding last weekend through the section of Illinois that I went through farther south.
We aren’t in need of someone to do what Hoover did 90 years ago (feed and house more than half a million people), although there are still quite a few people affected by the high water. But I think I can say that the levee system did what it was intended to do (regardless of other good or bad side-effects). In 2011, the Mississippi rose a foot higher than back in 1927. And the flooding along the Missouri this year is worse than it was in 2011. But the damage and displacement of people is far, far less than back then.
Today’s miles: 525 road Total miles: 2,254 road, 407 track
Day 9 – Sunday, June 2
A fairly straight-forward and uneventful drive through Kansas and eastern Colorado. I well remember last year’s range anxiety on this same road. Today I filled up in Smith Center, Kansas, three hundred miles to Byers. I’d been getting a bit over 33mpg and figured I could make it easily. Just the same, I topped off the tank at my lunch stop in St. Francis, at the last working gas pump before HPR.
Today’s miles: 524 road Total miles: 2,778 road, 407 track
