Yesterday we took a ride over to the Great River Road and up to Grafton Illinois for lunch. Grafton is about 30 minutes into Illinois and an hour from the arch in downtown St. Louis. Grafton is located about where the Illinois River meets the Mississippi River.
We ate at a bait shop turned biker bar – the HAWG PIT BBQ.
Food was decent. We got there right about the time they were opening. Good thing too, because the bikes kept coming.
Then we headed up the River Road to Pere Marquette State Park. I used to go camping and fishing there a lot as a teenager and young man. We just rode up through the park and out again as we had to get back home.
Here are some more pics. Click on any of them to enlarge them.
My buddy Mel
It was a beautiful day to ride. I knew I should have used sunscreen. I’m a little bit ouchy today.
Looks like you had an excellent day for a cruise. Gorgeous scenery.
That is a cool ride, nice pics.
did you lose your phone or your other shoe
I don’t think I lost anything on this ride. Anytime I opened my trunk, I remembered to lock it back up.
BTW: I don’t know why, but I still have to one shoe from the pair that I lost one of. (Was that a sentence?)
I think it’ll be safe to throw it away. But on second thought it would make a fine eBay item.
Great photos……how come you didn’t stop at Fast Eddies??? I thought thats where all you bikers go on a Sunday afternoon
Jonco – It would make a lovely planter on your deck.
I love Fast Eddie’s, but we wanted to try this new place my buddy Mel knew about. Besides I like to drink when I go to Fast Eddies, and I don’t normally drink when I ride my bike. It’s bad enough when I’m in my car.
During he floodwaters of 1993, before we ever saw the great bridge Jonco features from Alton, Ill. back into Misouri, my family traveled up the west side of the MISSOURI river, in St. Charles county to Winfield, Mo. There we got on a ferry to, we presumed, Illinois. Got to “the other side” and drove around an hour or so in these strangely beckoning rolling patchwork farmlands. But it wasn’t Illinois proper, anyway. We got desperate near ferry closing and boarded a ferry, which naturally, we presumed, would return us to Missouri. Nope. On over to Grafton, Illinois, wich had suffered devastating flooding and has been beautifully rebuilt along the Missisippi, witness Jonco’s shot.
So we started down the river road south, around 7pm, August, to observe the great beauty of the sun-setting rays on the white bluffs to the east and the wide,wide river on the west. It was like an ocean drive; drives I’ve driven thousands of miles to make and we found it quite by accident that aftenoon. It was dark when we got back to I-270 in St. Louis, but now, we rarely go there without making this trek. That peninsular region between rivers and states seems to bring time to a standstill.
I checked and that’s Mississippi River Rd. an Illinois highway I guess, through Batchtown, Beechville, but NO beach, Brussels and up #1 to the Grafton ferry crossing northof thetown of Grafton and near Swan Lake. I remember that night in ’93 wondering if that lake was just stranded high water. Come to think of it, I still don’t know. The flooding was so bad down there that it was a large lake. There was very dramatic coverage of that tragic, wet summer in the StL. Post/Dispatch.
Jonco,
Have ya been up in Alton to see the big guy, Robert Pershing Wadlow? Actually, it’s a huge statue of the friendly giant who grew to an historical heighth of 8’11″http://www.metacafe.com/watch/55050/boy_giant_the_story_of_robert_wadlow/
I remember seeing the statue of the Alton Giant a long time ago.