I arrived in Saint Louis Tuesday afternoon planning to use Wednesday as another day to relax, refresh, and reflect. Although it was a little short of halfway between Saint Paul and New Orleans – the two main cities bracketing the trip – I chose Saint Louis as a place to rest because it afforded me the opportunity to visit with long-time friends Kathryn and Paul. Not only was it wonderful to see them, to catch up, and to share broad ranging conversation but they were gracious and generous hosts.
Tuesday night they took me to a favorite restaurant of theirs in the central west end, Niche, that was neither in a hidden corner nor marketed to a specific and limited clientele. Afterward we returned to their house where we watched probably an inning too many of the baseball all-star game because they had to work on Wednesday and had insisted on doing all the driving around town.
I spent Wednesday sorting pictures and writing but in the evening, we met again for dinner (and I did some laundry at their house). After dinner, we went to Starbucks for coffee (tea for me) until I had them return me to the Drury at what I hoped was a more reasonable hour than they had on Tuesday.
With Saint Louis marking more or less the mid-point of the trip, it seemed appropriate to reflect on my experiences thus far. I don’t intend this to be a deep philosophical journey but rather a recap of impressions that I haven’t yet shared. Structurally, I suspect this entry will be rather random and I’ll add additional thoughts as I continue the journey so this post might not have temporal cohesion.
First, calling this drive the Great River Road is something of a misnomer and you shouldn’t be misled by the screenshotted map from Wikipedia below (or by any other map for that matter).
For most of the journey it’s been more akin to the “City of New Orleans.” By this I mean you roll along past houses, farms, and fields. Yes, there are stretches – sometimes a score of miles or more – where the river is in sight, nearby, or the road is adjacent to it. These are the places I’ve tried to photograph. Don’t judge the road based only on the pictures I’ve taken, however. Most of the road, while scenic and beautiful, traverses byways that are miles from the river.
It’s puzzled me that at nearly every stop, I feel people equate air-conditioning with refrigeration. Most of my hotel rooms have had the thermostat set as low as 68 degrees and none have been above 70. Thus, the first action I take is turning those up to a minimum of 74. I know that I’m the guy who wears long sleeved shirts and hats all summer and who usually tells people that I start feeling heat somewhere around Dante’s third circle of hell but not only is 68 just downright wasteful, it’s cold!
Two words I’m comfortable applying to the upper Midwest (I include Iowa, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois at a minimum) are Harley-Davidson. I don’t know if the numbers of motorcyclists I’ve encountered correlates to being mostly off the interstates (though they were plentiful on those highways in both Dakotas) but I’ve seen groups of motorcyclists with surprising frequency. And most of them are riding Harleys – so easily identified by that signature sound.
Speaking of sound, my guilty listening pleasure last summer was the song Bom-Bom by Sam and the Womp.
This summer, though considerably more mainstream, All About That Bass by Meghan Trainor has filled that guilty pleasure station’s airwaves. (Trainor, of course, became a much bigger star than Sam and the Womp.)
After applying two words to the upper Midwest, here’s one to apply to the Great River Road: roadkill. Again, I don’t know the reason for the abundance of dead animals but I’ve probably seen at least one carcass in the road every 20 miles or so. And this plenitude is not limited to small animals like squirrels. Deer are the most common but there have been others – many unrecognizable. Perhaps these roads, many of which are two lanes with relatively high speed limits (60 or 65 mph), leave less room to avoid collisions than the interstate system. Perhaps they’re simply not attended to by the authorities with the alacrity they’d receive on major roads. Whatever the reason, I’ve seen my fill of animal remains.
Unsurprisingly, in the more northern reaches of this journey I encountered few people of color. I did begin to see pockets of African Americans in Dubuque and, of course, by the time I reached Saint Louis, Memphis, and even the delta I felt a bit more multi-ethnically comfortable. However, even in Memphis, a demographic map I saw seemed to show that the city remains segregated by neighborhood.
People who know me know that I’m something of a conservationist. The solar panels on my house,
the high
efficiency heating and air-conditioning systems I’ve installed there, driving a hybrid Honda Civic for more than a decade demonstrate that. So, when I packed for this trip, I decided that although I could have minimal impact with respect to washing linens because I stayed only a single night in most places, I dropped a bottle of Doctor Bronner’s Magic soap in my bag.
I’ve never been able to fully use the small soap bars completely even on multi-might stays so out comes the Doctor Bronner’s and I don’t waste the bar soap. Nearly all the B & B’s where I’ve stayed have provided liquid soap for hand washing and some sort of body wash in the shower. The Drury Inn in Saint Louis has also made the shift to all liquid. Some places have mixed the two – using bars for the shower and liquid for hand washing. Still, it’s one more little thing I can do. (And please don’t point out that driving more than 6,000 miles in three weeks isn’t doing the environment any good. I realize that. But I drive a hybrid, have averaged close to 50 mpg, and purchased offsets from carbonfund.org for whatever that might be worth.)
Speaking of hotels and motels, what started this trend of curved shower curtain rods? What do they add? Do they make something easier for the housekeeping staff? Do they make the shower seem roomier even though it’s not? And why do they no longer have blankets? Why am I forced to sleep under this hybrid sheet/comforter concoction they all use. Or discard that and use only a sheet? And what of those folded, decorative half-blankets at the foot of the bed? They’re too small to serve any useful purpose and they always end up on the floor. Then there are those fat decorative pillows. No one in their right mind would try to sleep on them, meaning they, too, get shoved to the side or onto the floor and leave the room in disarray. Speaking of pillows, how do most hotels find what I call three-quarter thickness pillows? One is not quite enough but two is too much. Maybe I’m just getting old and crotchety. (“Hey you kids! Get off my lawn!”)
One last bit of hotel rant that really applies to this trip specifically. Somehow, nearly every room I’ve had has had an east facing window. Since I’m a generally early riser, it’s not a big deal but it has been a remarkable coincidence.