Missouri and on to Iowa

We spent the night in Hannibal MO, a town that tries to leverage its rich history but somehow feels inauthentic.  Like many many river towns we drove through, it seems on the decline.  The best part of Hannibal was a story Daniel told me about his being there several years ago with a botanist from Bolivia who spoke not one word of English.  He had read Huckleberry Finn in school in Bolivia and was thrilled to go the the Mark Twain Museum.

Before we left we collected a lot of specimens behind the hotel.

We left Hannibal and headed North toward Iowa.  We decided to visit the Mississippi one more time.  We had breakfast on a beach in La Grange.  To get to the beach we had to cross a muddy patch.  Mississippi mud is nothing to be cavalier about -- you can end up in deep.  I threw down some logs to walk on while Daniel waited, camera ready, for me to fall in.  Sorry I did not oblige.

Daniel cleaned up in the river.  Then we collected specimens right by the river.

We head out for Keokuk, a small town in that little protruberance in the SE corner of Iowa, because Chief Keokuk is buried there.  Yeah, we didn't know who he was either, it just seemed like a good idea.  BTW, he was noted for making nice with the white man.  The town itself has some lovely areas with impressive riverfront Victorians.   We found the park where the Chief is honored and placed a little vase of flowers and moved on.

We made some random collecting stops and then things got weird again.  No kidding.  We got stuck on a levee again!  We were trying to exit from a wetland area where we were hoping to collect.  What looked like a road turned out to be a levee and Daniel misjudged the road, by a lot.  Well the sequence of events was strangely similar to the other day.  We get stuck.  Guy comes along and helps.  This time Daniel's knowledge of Spanish came in handy as this man spoke no English.  But he was really strong and put his back into lifting the back of the truck enough to get traction needed to move on down the levee.  The whole sequence of events was like 15 minutes, if that, just like the other day.  Before Daniel drove down (it's way steeper than it looks in pic) I asked if he has his insurance card.  He thought I meant for the truck...no I was thinking hospital.  My next question, if had hung around, would have been do you have a DNR?  No joke.  I was thinking he would be the next and last recipient of one my little roadside bouquets.  I did manage to extract a promise that he will no longer attempt to drive on levees.  Phew!

We then hit the road and it was all pretty farmland.  If you like corn and soybeans.  I mean do American farmers grow anything else?  It's been a week and that's all we see (OK some tobacco..but still.)  And..NO farm stands,  Does everyone drive forever to a Wal-Mart SuperCenter?  Because we haven't seen a grocery store or a farm stand in days.  No exaggeration at all.  None.

We had dinner at a steakhouse and I fear my transformation into a simple country girl is complete, not a shred of glam left.  We were not asked where we all were from, and were seated with no explanation at all about the $3 surcharge if you want your meat cooked by the chef.  It was right there on the menu -- $3 to cook your food!  Unless you get up and throw it on the grill yourself.  Daniel says we would have been briefed if we hadn't looked so local.  Yikes, where's my lipstick?  By the way, they had cheeseburger soup.  And steak soup.  Really.

Last stop was a section of maybe remnant prairie where we collected a few specimens.  Then to our Microtel in the middle of a cornfield.  If there are wildflowers anywhere on the perimeter of that cornfield I will find them in the morning.

Vernonia

More pics of pretty plants coming soon, promise!