Day 8: Jackson MO -> Clinton IA

So today turned out to be a bit of a nothing day.  Mr Google done told me that up past St Louis they're building an Even Newer Chain Of Rocks Bridge to replace the New Chain Of Rocks Bridge, which in turn supplanted the Chain Of Rocks Bridge in 1970.  "Aha!" said Mr Larrington.  "By visiting the original and genuine Chain Of Rocks Bridge, which I last clapped eyes on in 2016, I can also see what's going on upriver with new! IMPROVED!!1! Bridgey Goodness".

Except that when I got there, rufty-tufty hairy-arsed artisans were also at work on the bridge over the canal wot bypasses the Chain Of Rocks itself, rendering the Chain Of Rocks Bridge inaccessible.

"Damn and blast!" exclaimed Mr Larrington.  "Still, the Confluence Tower is not far away and who knows?  Perhaps today there will be someone there to take my ten zlotys and permit access to the tower:

that I might view the, er, confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers."

There wasn't. OK.  The National Great Rivers Museum is only a few miles further, next door to the Melvin Price Locks and Dam.  Downstream of the Chain Of Rocks the Mississippi is free-flowing all the way to the Gulf of America Mexico but there's twenty-seven locks between there and Minneapolis, y'see.  Park the car, trudge halfway to the museum entrance before spotting a board reading "No bags allowed".  And another one reading "ID Required".  It's a museum, FFS, not a SEEKRIT Nuclear Bunker; the Nike Missile Site SL-90 is 25 miles up the road.  So bolshie great yarblockoes to the National Great Rivers Museum and all who sail in her.

I decided thereafter to follow the Great River Road signs northwards.  This was a Good Thing, at least at first, because IL-100 follows the river in exactly the same way that all previous parts of this year's anabasis didn't.  Very scenic.  Unfortunately it then wanders off parallel to the Illinois River.  Which I'm sure is a very nice river in its own right

See?

but forms part of the navigable link between the Mississippi and the Great Lakes and thus goes off in the wrong direction.  This in turn required negotiating two-hundred odd miles of the agricultural heart of western Illinois, which rivals western Cambridgeshire for dullness.  The last bit from the Quad Cities^[1] up to Clinton, after crossing the river into Iowa, were more like IL-100 and actually went in the right direction.

After juggling the map and calendar it seems I have more time to cover less distance that I had antic...

...

...pated so can take it a bit easier from here to the actual source of the river, and have an extra day to get halfway across the country to Battle Mountain to boot.  Hurrah!