Arkansas trip day 9: Bowling Green, MO to Muscatine, IA

Today, I'm definitely out of the Ozarks, and into the river bluff country.  After missing out on a lot of twisty roads yesterday, I decided to go back and redo some of yesterday's routes, and add some things the guys at Gateway BMW suggested.

Here's Pepper, fully loaded for the road.  Do I carry too much stuff? Probably.

Okay, so I went back South on US 61 towards I-70, then cut over on county F, near Whiteside.  I was supposed to go up MO -79 yesterday, which goes right along the river and hits several historic towns.  So I tried the alphabet roads that were in between the two, and they were great - running up and down the hills by the river.

F led into W which twisted its way on in to the cute little town of Clarksville when it met up with MO 79.  It's a cute little town, and I stopped at a coffee shop, and they told me about 79 being washed out between there and Hannibal.

Okay, then on the way to Hannibal, I went on the detour, which was actually on a nice letter road (T) and led me into Hannibal.  On the way into town, I saw a group of bikes take a side road up a hill, and decided to follow them.  They were a riding club from Illinois, and the place they led me too was called "Lover's Leap."

Once I got into Hannibal, it was a little touristy.  There were signs like this:

And the Jail site:

Kind of working on the Mark Twain theme.  But it is a historical river town, with some cool buildings.

After Hannibal, it was a little further north, and then, time to cross the river.  Another ferry!

You may ask, how do you call the ferry?

So what is Illinois like?  It was at first very flat and straight line roads.  But I got to Nauvoo, and there were these historic displays, and restored houses.  Nauvoo was yet another place the Mormons tried to settle, but it didn't work out for long.

Then I went into the restored town, and decided to visit a house

I didn't realize that the whole town was restored by the Mormons and staffed by people who were more than happy to try and explain all about their religion to me. But I did score a copy of "The Book of Mormon."

Well, and then I rode till I didn't feel like riding any further, and that happened to be Muscatine, IA "Pearl of the Mississippi".  Super 8 w/ grits for breakfast!