Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Big River
I have in mind to go due west to the Mississippi River and then follow it north to Minneapolis. Another of my old Citigroup colleagues suggests camping at a place called the Mississippi Palisades, and I head in that direction.The road, Illinois Route 64, leads out North Avenue - which actually starts in Chicago, not far from Wrigley - through the western suburbs, past the Dekalb County courthouse in Sycamore, and brings me to Oregon, Illinois, on the banks of the Rock River. South of town there's a state park where I stop to take in the scenery and take a short hike in the woods, and to climb to the top of Castle Rock, which is a sort of local landmark. The view from the top is nice enough.
As for Castle Rock itself, however, the stairs I climb for the view intrude a little on its scenic value:
While I'm there another visitor asks if I've seen the statue, and I remember that Joe had mentioned something about that. The man gives me directions to it, back north of Oregon, so I double back to see Chief Blackhawk's image recreated in the world's second-largest concrete statue. It turns out to be a generic Indian that everyone has since decided is Chief Blackhawk. It's pretty big. It's not the worst statue I've ever seen.Back in Oregon I stop at a place that looks like a charming, '50s-era roadside stand, and that's exactly what it is: a place that looks like a charming, etc. It's not the worst burger I've ever eaten.
I head southwest, following the Rock River through Grand Detour, Dixon, and the twin towns of Sterling and Rock Falls. Grand Detour is where John Deere developed the steel plow, and there's a little working museum run by the John Deere Company to celebrate the man's life. I can take an informative and educational tour to see a recreation of the blacksmith shop, etc., which the woman at the desk makes to sound almost as much fun as a big bowl of wheat germ. I pass. I do stop to look at the prairie they've planted out front, presumably to commemorate the eradication of the prairie by the steel plow.
Dixon was the boyhood home of Ronald Reagan, which is not obvious from the main road through town and which I do not stop to look for. There is a hunk of the Berlin Wall, placed there in his honor, and I take a picture of it as a substitute.There are no falls in Rock Falls, only a large and unpicturesque weir dam. Sterling has a mural depicting the eight presidents who have visited Sterling. I keep moving.
I'm headed toward the Quad Cities of Moline, Rock Island, Davenport, and (there is some debate on this point, apparently) either Bettendorf or East Moline. Butwhen I hit US 30 I decide to cut due west, the better to get my tent up at a reasonable hour. It's a mostly uninspiring ride across cornfields. The map makes it look like I will drive smack into the river, but that's not quite the way the topography works around here. Instead, when I get to route 84, designated as part of the Great River Road, I see an earthen berm ahead of me and not much else. It's that way for a while as I follow the road north toward Savanna.
And suddenly there it is. I'm surprised when I see it. Reggie and I were in Memphis a few years ago, and the river there was violently roiling, full of mud and branches and commerce, a force to be reckoned with. It was the Mississippi River that I recognized from Huck Finn and all the rest of American mythology. Here, where it's been carefully dammed and there's quite a bit less water flowing through it anyway - we're above the confluences of the Ohio and the Missouri, after all - it's flat and placid, still a mile or more wide but nothing that seems capable of defining a civilization. Still, it's the great border between East and West, and when I pass the sign that names it - without fuss, as if it were the Shenango or something - I feel a little pull.
Brent, my Citigroup colleague, was right: the Mississippi Palisades is a lovely spot. I choose a campsite in a remote corner of the campground, and then go to set up and realize that, however appealing this site may be, it does not anywhere have a six-by-six area of level ground to pitch a tent on.
I stop in Savanna to pick up some supplies and look around. It's Friday night, and the street is mostly populated with teenagers waiting for the movie theater to open and looking like they wish they were growing up somewhere else. I can't really fault them for that: it's a pretty enough spot, and if you like biking or fishing - or the signs indicate, squirrel hunting - there's that to do. But otherwise Savanna's a little short on thrills. (Well: it's also a motorcycle haven, which makes sense given the highway that cuts through it, and that may bring occasional excitement.) It doesn't even have an internet cafe, or a coffee bar of any stripe.No matter (other than, I suppose, yet further delays in my ability to deliver these missives to you, fair reader. Still, the world waited two years for Lewis and Clark's report. You can hang on a couple weeks.)
I head back toward the state park and realize it's going to be sunset soon, and, the way I'm planning things, my only sunset here. So I drive to the top of the bluff and take the short walk down to the end of the Sunset Trail. I'd been imagining solitude, but of course I don't get that. Instead, there are a few groups of like-minded travelers. Two generations of Californians driving an RV from Victorville to Columbus to see their granddaughter and great-granddaughter for the first time. A couple from Iowa whose itinerary I never quite figure out. A woman who left her father and his bad knees in the car until the great-grandfather insists he can't miss this. We share stories of the road, tell each other the sites not to miss, take pictures of each other in front of the view. (I do not improve upon the natural spectacle in mine, and you will not see it.) And it's just beautiful, and then the sun sets, and it's still beautiful.
I drive up and down the road a bit; the sky in the west slowly burns out, and the moon rises low to the south. For the fourth or fifth time, I feel like the trip is really beginning.
