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
