Mon-Wed, April 1-3, 2024
I am at Fort Massac State Park, located in the home of Superman, Metropolis, Illinois. Before arriving here Sunday, I had no idea that there was real town called Metropolis. Metropolis is on the Illinois side of the Ohio River, with Paducah, Kentucky being on the south side of the river. Interstate 24 connects the two states, crossing the river over the Paducah Bridge. It was built in 1973 and is 1.7 miles long. One has a good view of the bridge from the river shore in the state park. I watched a great sunset there Tuesday night.
I am amazed at the width of this river, as well as others like the Mississippi, the Missouri, and back home, the Hudson. They hold an amazing amount of water. They appear more like a long, wide lake than a flowing body of water. I have seen a few tugboats pushing barges along the river. They pass by slowly. It looks like five barges, lined up in a row, is the typical load. I wonder what they are carrying?
I can tell by the look of the river shore, the way trees are downed and stranded, as if left laying there by the river at some point in time, that the river has risen quite high. To reach that level, the river would probably have to rise by about 25 feet. Remember, it’s also almost two miles wide! I looked it up, and Wikipedia claims that the Missouri the longest in the United State. It is one foot longer than the Mississippi. Who knew!?!? However, the Mississippi carries the most water, followed in that category by the Columbia River. I started to look more into this river topic. It is very interesting.
Anyway, I am here at Fort Massuc SP three nights. The campground is not at all crowded. That is a big difference from the past five weeks, where the campgrounds at Fort Pickens, Davis Bayou, and Lake Enid were filled nightly. Monday night there were ten campsites occupied out of fifty sites. Massac Park has several picnic areas. The campground and picnic areas have a lot of tree cover, but it is not thickly treed. There is plenty of open land, even a frisbee golf course. There are dirt and paved biking-hiking trails. The George Rogers Clark Discovery Trail is about four miles long. Part of it is on a paved park road through the main park area, followed by about 2.7 miles on a concrete trail over an old railroad bed. The bikeway goes an additional two miles on town roads to Brockport. I did not go there. I made an 8.5-mile loop circuit utilizing park roads along with the Discovery Trail. I did 50 miles on Monday and 15 miles Tuesday. Those were warmer days, temps near 80. Today there has been showers off and on, and that is the forecast the rest of the day. I might be taking the day off from riding. We even had a bit of hail today on two occasions. It is 44 degrees out right now, with a strong wind.
Speaking of inclement weather, early Tuesday morning, 5AM, I was woken by a loud siren. I heard and it and wondered for a second what it was, then my phone buzzed an alert, too, and I guessed correctly; it was a tornado warning. “Extreme danger” was the heading in bold red letters on the phone alert. The message was to take cover in the “closest substantial structure immediately.” The town siren continued. That meant walking to the structure her in the with bathrooms and showers. I went there straight-away. I met four other people there, two couples. We were all pretty calm, monitoring the status of the sky. It was not raining, but it was windy with continual lightning, though no thunder. Around 5:15, it began to rain and be very windy. The lights went out around that time, too. I could hear a lone generator in the distance. The two couples went into one of the bathrooms. I opted for one of the others. I did not close the door completely, wanting to monitor what was happening outside. At one point, I had the door open a few inches when a gust of wind caught it and opened it all the way. That startled me. I was able to close it, but I realized then, if that was a tornado strength wind, no way could I have closed it and it might have just blown it away. Hmmm … but all was fine. My phone now had an update that said there was a severe squall line passing through at 5:14, moving eastward at 45 mph, and that radar had detected a tornada rotation, adding that “mobile homes will be damaged or destroyed.”
Then after about ten minutes things calmed own, it was over, we did not experience a tornado. Around 5:30 we all went back to our campsites. I went back to sleep.
Later that day, I went up to McDonald’s for tea and internet. I sat at a table with a woman sitting at an adjacent table. I began talking about the tornado warning. She looked at me and said, you’re not from around here, are you. Where are you from? I told her. She talked about where she lived. Her home is on a ridge that must be good size. She said people gather on the ridge when there’s flooding. In 1937, farmers moved their cattle there to be safely away from a flood that year. I looked up information on that flood, and it was one of the worst in US history, throughout the entire Ohio Valley area down to the confluence with the Mississippi River near Cairo. In one place in Southern Illinois, the river was 65 feet about flood stage, and water had reached 30 miles from the river’s normal path. Wow.
She went on to say, if someone lived through a tornado hit, they’ll pray to God they never have to do that again. She told me she lost her home, her son lost his, and another family member a third. She and her husband sheltered in the basement. The wind got into the basement, turned over a refrigerator there, and blew stuff all around, but they managed safely. She said the damage after was like a war zone. Total destruction.
A friendly guy named Keith is the campground host. He is retired from being the town manager of city parks. He has been involved as a host in the state park system since around 2000. He has a home in town, but he is the camp host here year-round, spending about 90% of his nights here, he said. That is an unusual situation. Most parks I have been at, camp hosts have a limited term commitment, anywhere from one to six months generally.
I came here in a roundabout manner. I left Davis Bayou Campground, in Mississippi on the Gulf Coast, on Saturday morning, driving to an Army Core of Engineers Campground, Persimmon Hill, on Lake Enid towards the northern end of Mississippi. Lake Enid is huge, despite the water level appearing to be low. There was a great deal of exposed land that would be covered with water if the lake was filled. As with many Army Corp of Engineer campgrounds, there is a dam involved. This one is two miles long! It is a stone and earth structure, which seems to always be the material, as compared to concrete, like Hoover Dam or Glen Canyon Dam. The campground is in a large stand of pine trees on the southwest shore of the lake. The pines grow as individuals, most being several feet apart. They make for some inspirational experiences, just looking at them and walking among them. They help create a feel-good environment. It appears they are home to a great many birds, as the air was lively with their singing.
On Sunday, I drove to Dixon Springs State Park here in southern Illinois. It is about twenty miles northeast of Metropolis. I stayed at Dixon Springs Sunday night. I did not like some things about the place. The bathrooms looked very dirty, no showers or even any running water, and my campsite was on a gradient. I was able to make some phone calls and transfer my reservation to Massac, and when I arrived here, Keith welcomed me and told me pick a spot that was open for the next three nights.
The campground will fill up for the coming weekend. This area is on the fringe of path totality for the solar eclipse next Monday (4/8). On Thursday, I will be moving to a new park, Canal Campground, inside of Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area. It is in Kentucky, about 40 miles southeast from Metropolis. I’ll be there six nights. Canal Campground is just outside of the area of totality. On Monday, I will drive north for 30-60 minutes, putting me in a location where I will have totality. I might drive as far as Vienna, Kentucky, as there is a 55-mile rail-trail bike path that starts-ends there.
At Lake Enid, I arrived on a very windy afternoon. I had hoped to do a bike ride, but I was not prepared mentally to ride in the wind as it was. It blew my hat off! This was a crowded campground. It looked like I had one of two remaining sites, all others occupied. There were about one hundred sites. That said, I thought the site was great, as it was right on the edge of the campground with the pine forest community behind me. As the day moved on, the wind decreased. I took a walk in the evening. FYI, I just have to walk 10K steps daily, so I had to take a long walk. I walked around the campground first, then down to the edge of the reservoir, and then up around the pines to the dam.
Just so we are clear about it, there were a lot of bird species. There was a whole lot of singing. And the sky at night, subtle wonderful, as I was watching from my campsite. The clouds are like pillows, a multitude of layers, sizes, and colors beckoning me to lie down beneath the rising pines, and at the same time, to float, spirit rising high …
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