Great River Road Trip, Day #4
Wednesday, May 7, 2025
Day number four started with a brief stop at Lovers’ Leap - a viewpoint from the top of the bluff on the south end of Hannibal. This view is looking back northward over the city of Hannibal.
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This is the view looking down river from Lovers’ Leap. Several smaller tugs were in the process of joining a number of barges together to build one large group for transport.
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This is an art instillation on the top of Lovers’ Leap where the insides of the hearts are chainlink fencing and people attach locks.
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Our next stop was Louisiana - but not the state - this was the town of Louisiana, Missouri. Once again, like so many of these river towns, the best years seem to be behind them.
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Riverview Park offers some elevated views of the river. This image is looking south down river toward the old railroad bridge.
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Some of the buildings of what were once significant industry now lay in ruins. This one appears to have suffered a fire.
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This old grain elevator did not appear to be operational any longer.
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This is Lock & Dam #24 in Clarksville, Missouri. This is the final lock & dam we had planned to visit.
You can see that all the roller gates are elevated and or not even making contact with the water. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are working on the dam. The river is so high at this point that the water going past the dam is almost equal on both sides despite the gates being fully open. The guy I spoke with that was working there said the vertical travel in the lock today was roughly 6-inches. Compare that to what we saw at #19, where the vertical travel was 35-feet!.
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The view looking north from Lock & Dam #24. The north end gates of the locking chamber are open today and there was no traffic in sight.
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We arrived in St. Louis at roughly 1 pm and went directly to the Zoo. We spent the entire afternoon there until they were about to close at 5pm. This zoo is simply amazing!! It is huge and so clean and they have so many animals in such nice enclosures. The animals all look so healthy and happy in their surroundings.
The rest of the photos from today are of the zoo, and Lisa insisted that most of these needed to be in color to showcase the animals. I have to agree, the animals generally should be in color.
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Yummy lunch!!
If my neck was just a few inches longer….
This guy appears to be giving a sermon, but the rest of his buddies are ignoring him.
Another splendid day; and tomorrow we are off to the Gateway Arch. We are scheduled to get some rain, so we hope it is not a complete washout.
