Wednesday, September 13, 2006

A "little" incident

We finally reached the Mississippi and were so impressed with the early views; we intentionally turned north to “cruise” along the eastern shore. The day was dull with a light mist and, every so often, we ran through a light rain. You could almost imagine Huck and ol’ Jim huddled together on a raft drifting by in the mist, except for the river tugs with large rafts of 8 or 10 barges stretched out before them. The guide books all extolled the virtues of a quaint little shore-side village named Elsah, which we picked as our turn-around point in order to continue our journey south. AFTER we turned onto the one lane, and only, road in and out of Elsah, we were greeted with a “5 Ton Load Limit” sign (our rig weighs 32,000 pounds without the car!) immediately before the bridge in front of us. We also found that there were no “blocks” to go around. All roads in Elsah “T” off the one main (one lane) road. So, we could not go forward, couldn’t go around the block to reverse direction and, could not back up due to our rigid tow bar connection to our car behind. Did I mention that by now it was POURING rain?

While Brenda remained cozy and warm in the RV, I got out, disconnected and started the car, at which point, dry Brenda dashed out and drove the car out of the way. I was able to back the RV into the only driveway wide enough to take it and finally got the rig turned around. Then, dry Brenda appeared in the car. While dry Brenda inched the car toward the back of the RV, I got it re-hitched and we were…….. outta there!!!

Elsah was, in fact, a cute little village and, we think we will take a ferry back across the Mississippi River with THE CAR and revisit. We are currently at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, just outside St. Louis, in the city of St. Charles, made famous as the departure point for the Lewis & Clarke expedition (and numerous other explorations of the west).

Due to the heavy rain and my rather dour mood, there were no pictures taken of the above incident (Dry Brenda was either laughing too hard or, thought better of it……I’m not sure which)

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