Headed for Mark Twain's Home Town

This morning, after the obligatory fuel stop, we jumped on Illinois I255 and headed north to the site of the ancient Native American city of Cahokia. Since we chose our camp site last night based on its proximity to Cahokia, it only took us fifteen or twenty minutes to find it. We pulled into the parking lot hoping, as we always do, that there wouldn't be so many cars in the way that we'd have a problem locating enough space for the motor home.

But we had at least half the parking lot all to ourselves and chose a nice spot beneath a spreading maple full of fall colors. Our plan was to spend lunchtime in the RV in the shade of that tree before we headed north and west to our final destination for the day, Hannibal, Missouri.

Let me just say that Cahokia is immense. How big? Try 2200 acres. Naturally, we didn't intend to prowl the whole property, but we fully intended to do some walking so we disembarked from the coach with our day pack, water bottles, camera, and suitable hats intending to spend at least several hours pursuing one of Concetta's favorite subjects, that of paleo-Indians.

Just inside the door of the interpretive center we were invited to view a 17 minute film that would acquaint us with the site and make our visit more rewarding. After the film we spent the next two hours trying to absorb as much as possible of what life was like in the Mississippi River valley between 700 and 1400 A.D. Unbelievably, this civilization, at its peak about a thousand years ago, counted as many as 20,000 citizens, the largest city north of the Aztec's Mexico City. Not until Philadelphia of the 1830s did North America have a city as large.

Now paleo-Indian cultures are not normally my favorite subjects of study. But these people were so industrious I was enthralled. If you've Googled the subject you know that the specialty of these early Mississippian Americans was digging large holes near their villages and putting the dirt in a central location. The biggest mound, which Concetta and I climbed, took 300 years and no less than 15 million trips to the top with a 50 to 60 pound basket of dirt to complete. Try getting your teenagers to take on a project like that.

Once up there, you could see why the rulers wanted to put their central government houses on top of these giant mounds. There's no doubt who's in charge when you have to look skyward to see your head guy. One sign I saw said that the chief's "hut" was about 50 feet by 100 feet in size. Can you imagine how much time, effort, and materials went into such a project? It wasn't the pyramids of Giza, but it sure must have taken as much coordination to pull off.

My favorite part of the museum involved the process called "flint-napping." Flint-napping is chipping away chert material to get things like arrowheads, spear points, hoes, war clubs, and scrapers. I always get lost in watching somebody do that. Using things like bones and antlers, these Indians patiently (I don't normally have a lot of that) flake off one bit of chert at a time until they finish with a splendidly crafted point. Beats me how they're able to do such a fine job though I've watched it done numerous times. I watched the video at the museum twice, but I think I'd still need some hands on to ever try it myself.

This particular civilization did not fail because of the coming of the Europeans. Amazingly enough, Cahokia had ceased to exist around 1400 A.D., before even the Spanish had begun their explorations of the new world. What did them in? It was their Success! The civilization's farming techniques were so successful that it encouraged a population explosion. One statistic we saw recounted that Cahokia had 4,000 persons per square mile at the height of their civilization. Nowadays, we here in America believe that a population density of 250 persons per square mile is about tops for an urban setting. Even though they were experts in growing corn, squash, beans, and a variety of salad greens, 20,000 humans is a lot of people to feed on a daily basis. They were also adept at foraging for natural foodstuffs like nuts, berries, and root tubers, as well as the usual compliment of native animals and fish.

Experts think that their success at nation building may have caused their ultimate failure. Too much food needed. Too many trees burned for firewood. Too little sanitation for a population that size. Any one or all of these things may have ultimately caused these early Americans to move away from Cahokia and allow the city to die. Whatever the reason, they left behind some truly fascinating clues to what life was like in their time. Concetta and I very much recommend you try and see it when next you travel this way.

When we rolled out of Cahokia I told Concetta that our next destination, Hannibal, Missouri, ought to be a piece of cake. As Billy Crystal would say, "Never say famous last words." All we had to do was jump back on Interstate 255 north, change almost immediately to Interstate 70 west, and, when the opportunity arose, catch state route 79 north to Hannibal. At least, that's what it said in the playbook. And at first things went well. We found I255. We exited promptly onto I70. But then we started getting hit with all manner of choices of freeways coming in rapid fire one after the other. Before we knew it we were blazing through St. Louis, trying to keep our eyes on the road while the St. Louis arch, in all it's early afternoon resplendent glory, beckoned out our passenger-side window. But we trucked on hoping that at some point we'd see a sign for state route 79 and we could get off the Mad Hatter's Tea Party of St. Louis' freeway megalopolis. On we trekked without seeing it when I was just certain we'd way overshot our mark and we're going to end up somewhere in central Missouri, hundreds of miles from our intended destination. Meanwhile, I'm yelling at Concetta to find our location on the map and tell me where in the hell we were.

Well, long story short, I finally exited the freeway and found myself an abandoned gas station to rest and consult the map before I had a meltdown. Naturally, it only took seconds to see if I'd just stayed on the I70 where I had been, my turnoff was just a mile or two further along. Yup, it was a tad hair-raising, but in the end we found our route and were headed north along the "Scenic River Route" on the west bank of the Mississippi.

Then, for the next sixty or seventy miles, things were wonderful. The sky over Illinois and eastern Missouri was more beautiful today than we've seen it anywhere for the past month. The randomly-spaced clouds were ultra fluffy looking, the sky's hues were all pastels of blues and purples and reds, and the overall effect was like an oil painting. It was something to see. Concetta and I rolled along, listening to our book on tape, and just let the Tioga eat up the miles.

And then Billy Crystal intervened again, darn him. There we were, out in the middle of who knows where on this twisty, curvy, mountainous road, when we rounded a corner and found a big orange sign blocking the entire highway. I looked at Concetta and back at the big orange sign. It said, simply, "Road Closed." That's it. No other information. No, "gee, sorry traveler, but an atomic bomb exploded just ahead and you'll have to go back to St. Louis until we clean it up." Or, "go back pilgrim, urban terrorists have taken over Hannibal and you don't EVEN want to go there now." No, it just said, "Road Closed" and let us decide what course of action to pursue.

Off to our right was this lonely-looking dirt road that crested a nearby hill and disappeared into the surrounding croplands. Well, we certainly didn't want to go THERE. But, we didn't want to go back either. So, finally, we backed up, put her in gear, and rolled into what we fully expected to be a future episode of the Twilight Zone.

Naturally, the entry of this thirty-foot behemoth onto this damn wash-boarded, dusty road did nothing for the RV or any of its rather loose-knit contents. Things were rattling and banging and, we felt certain, tearing themselves loose from their chintzy moorings and scattering themselves across the floor. Dust began to fill the coach immediately. Thankfully, turning the air conditioner to full blast cut the dust a bit.

Presently we came to a "Detour Sign." "Wow," I said to Concetta. "That would have been usefull out on the highway." But before long more detour signs began to show themselves, almost as if they'd been tacked up as an afterthought. They were faded and dog-eared and sad looking. It appeared to me as though no one really cared if you figured out how to choose the proper set of roads amongst all the different fields full of dead corn stalks or not. If you got lost, they'd just establish a cargo cult of some sort and strip your errant rig of whatever valuables they could turn up.

After about fifteen minutes we got to a "T" intersection containing no signs at all. One road went left, one right. We finally decided that left was sort of in the direction we had been traveling out on the highway and turned that way. Soon, we reached one of the sad, faded detour signs confirming our choice and minutes after that, the highway. Once we reached the camp grounds the manager told me that the road had been torn up for TWO YEARS! Now that's progress.

So, here we are, just a stone's throw from Mark Twain's boyhood home (he was born elsewhere you know). Fortunately, this is the one time that I called ahead to secure a spot in a camp. Every other night we've taken pot luck and made out just fine. But something told me that Hannibal's only campground was going to be above-average in popularity. My hunch proved right. When we got here we found that several travel clubs, made up of people driving those $100,000 bus-sized coaches, had made reservations, too. We got one of the few remaining spots.

At this point we're not sure just what activities we'll pursue tomorrow. We do know that by tomorrow afternoon we'll be headed toward the town that many of our ancestors in their covered wagons considered the "jumping off place" for the trails to California and Oregon, St. Joseph, Missouri. I expect there's going to be lots and lots of history to be found along the way. Until then, we wish you good food, good wine, and, above all, exciting destinations.

Ciao.