Category: yot1

4 states in one day! But we really didn’t drive many miles. I had never looked closely at the borders of these 4 states or noticed how they meet up around the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. It was a short 12-mile drive this morning from our motel in Charleston, Missouri, to the bridge across the Mississippi into Cairo, Illinois. Cairo is at the point of land formed by the “V” where the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers come together. So it was a brief 10 minutes in Illinois before we found ourselves crossing another bridge, this time over the Ohio River into Kentucky. In Wickliffe, Kentucky, a 95-foot cross sits on top of a bluff that overlooks the 2 rivers and has a view into the 3 states.

The drive through Kentucky was a bit longer than the drive through Illinois, but not much. In about 30 minutes we crossed over the Kentucky/Tennessee border into Fulton, Tennessee. Our plan was to spend the night in Jackson, Tennessee, which was less than a 100 miles so we were in no big hurry. When it got to be close to lunch time we looked on the map to see if there was anything interesting nearby and noticed Big Cypress Tree State Park, not too far off the main road. We decided to check it out.

Although the map showed it as a state park, it’s actually just a natural area and a small one at that.

Since it was a holiday we weren’t even sure it would be open. But we just wanted a place to park the car and eat lunch so we drove in. It was too cold to get out of the car but nice sitting in the sun. There was only one other car in the parking lot and we observed a park ranger and a girl with him who was picking up trash. Soon the ranger came over to the car and handed us a park brochure. What a disappointment to read that the Big Cyprus Tree was no longer even there!

But the ranger told us that in 30-minutes he would be leading a walk through the park and explaining its history and features. We decided to stick around. It turned out to be a very educational hour and a half, as well as an enjoyable time chatting with the ranger, his daughter and the other 2 people who came out for the walk.

Tonight we are staying in Jackson, Tennessee, and will continue our journey through Tennessee tomorrow.

The last couple of days have been spent exploring central and southeastern Missouri as we slowly meander our way to Florida. We are thankful that the winter storms common in the midwest at this time of the year have not made an appearance, giving us the option of leisurely travel.

New Year’s Eve in Columbia, Missouri, promised to be a warm day and we had a couple of local options for bike riding. It was still quite chilly in the morning so we walked around a local park and public garden.

The city library was an interesting building and we went inside to have a look. We found a marvelous reading room on the top floor where the sunlight streamed in the windows. That gave us a pleasant hour reading and catching up on the newspapers.

We then decided to drive down to Jefferson City, the capital of Missouri. We wanted to explore the sights there and we figured by that time it would be warm enough to ride our bikes. We were impressed with the capitol building and especially liked the fact that all the streets were deserted due to the holidays.


After looking around the capitol area we got on the Jefferson City Greenway and had a nice 12-mile bike ride, skirting the edge of the city.

We finished the day by driving to Rolla, Missouri. No staying up late to ring in the new year for these 2 tired travelers. Fortunately, Rolla was a small enough town that there weren’t local revelers to disturb our sleep.

New Year’s Day started with an inspiring worship service and message from God’s Word at Rolla First Assembly of God church. We got back on the road after church but since it was close to lunch time we didn’t drive too far before we spotted an interesting park and decided to make it our stop to eat the lunch we had packed.

Maramec Springs Park has a waterfall at one end of the pond where the water comes from the spring.
I’d never seen a spring this big before. The brochure says “average daily flow of around a hundred million gallons of water, enough to fill about 26 bathtubs every second.” There are also several trout rearing ponds managed by the Missouri Department of Conservation. The ponds were filled with rainbow and brown trout, some of them really huge.

The remainder of our New Year’s Day was spent enjoying the scenery as we drove southeast through the Missouri Ozarks, ending in the flat Mississippi delta region at Charleston, Missouri.