The Great River Road Through Illinois & Missouri
Driving the Great River Road from Iowa to Missouri to Illinois | Iliniwek Village State Historic Site | Hannibal, MO | Lewis & Clark State Historic Site | Fort Kaskaskia, IL | January 2024
After a relaxing week spent celebrating Christmas and New Years with family, it was time to get back on the road and onto our next season of adventures! We felt more than ready to head back down South to escape the cold and the snow that would soon be arriving. Of course, we were still going to travel at our slow pace, so we’d still have to put up with some cold nights on the road. But we accepted that as part of the life we’ve chosen, and prepared the best we could for the drive. Unfortunately, we hadn’t prepared our van well for a week of being stationary in freezing temps, so the water in our freshwater tank was frozen and plumbing was temporarily unusable. We’ll chalk that up as a lesson learned and do better winterizing in the future, and for now just be thankful that the only thing that actually broke was the cheap plastic shower head that we definitely wouldn’t be using until it became much warmer.
When we left Iowa, we had a little less than 3 weeks before we had to be in Wilmington, North Carolina. This is longer than we usually have to make the drive, so we decided to take our longest route yet to get there. We planned to follow the Mississippi River South into Louisiana, then head Southeast to the Gulf Coast. While there wouldn’t be as much hiking as we like, there were still many reasons to take this route. Much of this drive would be new to us, it would fill in a large gap on our county map, and we would be seeing the Gulf Coast for the first time!
We crossed into Missouri on IA-27, and our first stop of the trip came shortly after. We drove a few miles East of the highway on a dirt road to Iliniwek Village State Historic Site where we got out for a short walk. This site marks the location of an early historic Illinois village which was likely visited by Father Marquette and Joliet on their first exploration of the upper Mississippi in 1673. There’s not a ton to see with only a short trail through the prairie, but the informational signs were quite helpful in making connections with other places we’ve been to in Illinois.
Back on the road, we continued South to Hannibal. Itching for another walk, we stopped again at Riverview Park and went for another walk. We had visited here last September, and as Charlotte confidently led us on a walk around the park, we wondered if she remembered this place, or if she was just following smells.
As we were driving through Hannibal, we considered stopping downtown at some of the Mark Twain sites, but instead decided to go South of town and up Lover’s Leap for a nice overlook of the river and town. A steep drive up the hill and short walk around gave us just that, and finally we were on our way to find a campsite for the evening.
That night, we ended up camping at Clarksville State Game Refuge, a free Army Corps of Engineers campsite along the highway and by the river. Supposedly this is a good spot to see Eagles in the winter — in fact, Clarksville hosts an “Eagle Days weekend” for it in January — but unfortunately we didn’t see any. We learned that this is likely because the river isn’t frozen yet — when the river freezes, the eagles will congregate in a smaller area around the lock, but since it wasn’t frozen they were likely much more spread out here. We might have had more luck the following week, but who wants to hang around when it’s that cold?!
The next morning, we drove South to St. Louis, then crossed into Illinois. We made our first stop of the day at Lewis and Clark State Historic Site, at the Camp Dubois right across the Mississippi from the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. Curtis paid a visit to the visitor center first, then we set out on a little walk around the reconstructed fort. This site is approximately the location where Lewis and Clark wintered from 1803-1804 before beginning their journey up the Missouri. During that time, Lewis haggled with St. Louis merchants to secure additional supplies while Clark trained his new collection of soldiers into the Corps of Discovery.
From the Fort we drove a little further through the park to see the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. While the sky was grey and gloomy, and we won’t claim that this was the most beautiful thing we’ve ever seen, we were nonetheless excited to visit this spot and see where these two great rivers met. My mind played back memories we’ve made along both of these rivers: standing in the Mississippi River in St. Paul, MN on our honeymoon, crossing the Mississippi many times while driving between Iowa and Michigan, walking across the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge over the Missouri in Omaha, and following the river all the way up to Great Falls, Montana on a work trip. We both agree that our favorite part about our travels these days is seeing patterns in geological features and in historic sites, and piecing them all together to create bigger pictures. And on a personal level, thinking back to these past experiences and remembering who we were and what stage of life we were in when we visited, and knowing that this place we visited today and who we are today would soon become a memory and a piece in this story.
There is also a tower overlooking the confluence with much better views and a museum to the Great River road, but it was closed for the season, so we continued South out of St. Louis on IL-3 to Fort Kaskaskia State Historic Site in Illinois. We had lunch in the picnic shelter overlooking the Mississippi River, then went for a walk around the fort. This site was likely first visited by Marquette and Joliet on their way down the Mississippi. Later at the turn of the 17th century, French missionaries and explorers began moving up the Mississippi and settling alongside the tribes of the Illinois Confederacy (notably at Cahokia Mounds and Ste. Genevieve). A frontier town known as Kaskaskia (after the local tribe) was established at the base of the bluff between the Mississippi and Kaskaskia Rivers. Over the centuries, the town and associated fort changed hands; first to the British after the French and Indian War, then to the Americans after the Revolutionary War, during which George Rogers Clark was able to claim capture of most of the Mississippi River.
In 1803, Lewis and Clark (who was George Rogers Clark’s younger brother) stopped at the American fort and recruited several individuals to join the corps before wintering up at Camp Du Bois. Later the importance of the fort declined, and the importance of the town on the flood plain grew – serving as administrative center and capitol (albeit briefly) for the Territory of Illinois. But gradually over 20+ years, ecological and environmental damage to the banks of the Mississippi river caused that great river to flood repeatedly, culminating in a complete change of course that destroyed most of the city in 1881. Now this once great and historic town is mostly destroyed, effectively deserted, and on the Missouri side of the River.
We continued down IL-3 down to the Western side of Shawnee National Forest where we camped at the Turkey Bayou Campground along the Big Muddy River. So far, our trip mostly consisted of short walks around little historic sites and loosely following the Great River Road. Though it may not seem super significant or as exciting as our Arizona trip, we were truly enjoying each place where we stopped, and learning more at each historic site. It was all just a reminder of why we love living the way we do.
