Day 67 - Roodhouse, Illinois to Hermann, Missouri

Today turned out to afford us a wild cornucopia of experiences and emotions. Breaking camp in Roodhouse this morning, I knew that I was going to get to do something that I've wanted to do for many years: visit the Illinois town where the Jones family branch of my family tree lived after moving north from Louisville, Kentucky. Part of my excitement in seeing this town, called Carrollton, was remembering my mother talking about it so much when I was young. Mom did travel a bit, mostly in the southwest, but I don't think she ever got to Carrollton.

The Jones family, which contained several brothers, arrived in Illinois in the 1830s after a brief stop in Indiana. In 1858 the father died and in the early 1860s two of the brothers marched off to fight with the 61st Illinois Infantry in the Civil War. Incredibly, neither brother was killed, and by the 1870s the family had moved west to Colorado.

But today was my day to visit the Jones family Illinois home town and our Roodhouse camp was "conveniently" only a dozen miles away. Since we got out of camp fairly early, I was certain I could take some time to look the town over, take a few photos, and try and track down the cemetery.

Once in Carrollton, we parked right in front of the courthouse and set out on foot. Like most small towns in America whose existence depended on small family farms, Carrollton was more than a bit down at the heels. Still, the town square was very large and there was more than a few grand old brick buildings of 150 years lining the sidewalks. There were also empty spaces where, I'm sure, buildings had burned or fallen down and no one wanted to invest in a new replacement.

At one point I came across the genealogical library nestled in under several trees and I rushed up to the door only to find that the building was only staffed on Tuesdays and Fridays. For reference I took a photo of the door sign with the phone numbers.

Coming back toward the truck, I crossed paths with a pretty, middle-aged woman dressed in bright red who suddenly stopped and asked me how I was doing. I told her that I was doing just fine and as long as she appeared to be interested in my welfare, I asked her where the oldest cemeteries in town were located.

She sort of squinted into the distance, turned and stared down one of the streets, then turned back and said that she only knew of two. One family-ish plot at the north end of town and one at the south. I thanked her and told her that I had seen the one on the north. It was just a mile or so out of town.

With the cemetery information in hand Concetta and I returned to the truck, circled the square (yeah, right), and headed back the way we had just come. It wasn't far. Unfortunately, the cemetery was not important enough for anyone to provide parking so I sort of had to put the rig in the ditch and turn the hazard flasher on. It only took me about ten minutes to see that my ancestor who died in 1858 was probably not there, but if he was I wasn't going to be able to spot him. The readable graves were newish, and older ones were largely unreadable.

Moving to the cemetery on the south side of town, we discovered that the graves were even newer and I could tell that my ancestor would not be there.

Continuing our journey south we were soon on the outskirts of St. Louis. It was my plan to avoid the city as much as possible and instead follow the posted Lewis and Clark trail that basically crossed the Missouri at the town of Alton, and then stayed alongside the river all the way into central Missouri.

Turned out that Route 94, the Lewis and Clark Trail, was just what we needed and kept us well away, for the most part, of the bustle of St. Louis. We did encounter a bit of urban traffic for a short time, but we were able to keep on track and eventually Route 94 calmed down again and we were once again out in the woods.

The best thing that we encountered while driving Route 94 was the last home of Daniel Boone near the town of St. Charles (photo left). This stop turned out to be the high point of the day. I got to wander several acres of antique buildings, taking photos to my heart's content, and Concetta got to talk at length to the Boone property gardener and learn a lot about gardens in the 1700s (photo lower right). It was a win win.

But by the time we left Daniel Boone's home, it was getting really late in the afternoon and we had no idea where we were going to stay for the night. Mile after mile we drove without seeing any camps. Nor had we been able to see any camps in any of our guide books, which was not a good thing.

Finally, we plugged in an address for a camp well away from where we were, deciding we'd just have to drive in the dark. At that point the GPS advised us to deviate from Route 94 and cross the Missouri River and head south. We did as the GPS advised, even though it told us the camp was more than twenty miles away.

But as luck would have it, just after we crossed the Missouri River bridge to Hermann, Missouri, I spotted a municipal camp. The camp was absolutely FULL of RVs, so I didn't give us much hope of squeezing in, but we had to try. Miraculously, even though most sites were filled, and several empty ones were reserved, there were still two left unfilled and we grabbed one right away. Luck had certainly been with us.

The camp had all the necessary amenities and a newly paved and graveled area for our use. The nearby city street was pretty loud with Saturday-night teenagers on the prowl, but it soon quieted down.

And that was it. Day number 67 on the road had eased into nightfall, and as the wisps of smoke drifted over from a nearby neighbor's camp, we sat outside in our patio chairs, watched the cruising teenagers, listened to the laughter of children playing nearby, and counted our blessings one and all. Yup, it was a good day!