Stormy Weather

2/24/2019 – Still in Cahokia and going to STL today.

Well, did we ever wake up to a surprise! The storm left our RV an island in four-plus inches of water! Luckily Barb bought some rain boots before we left! Yowzers. About half the park is under water. This means that sewer… yup, underwater.

Barb quickly unhooked our water & put away the sewer hose. Then we made arrangements with the park to move the RV to higher ground. However…

The water lines in the park have been compromised, the water’s contaminated. So. We have 1/3 tank of water. We were planning to add water before we left.

Problem is… we leave the park on Saturday. We have a spot near Kansas City for Sunday & Monday but planned to stay in Jefferson City, Mo. Saturday night. However… Jefferson City got blasted by a tornado the night we hid in the storm shelter here so that option got blown up.

UGH. We’re both working on finding a place to get water. Operational plan right now is to call the local police & fire departments to see if we can cozy up to one of their spigots. If that doesn’t pan out, we’ll call a church or two. Errg. No go so far…

Cahokia RV Parque allowed us to move to higher ground which made it easier to get in & out of the RV at least. We decided to economize on water.

However… the day was another action packed one in STL. We did the ARCH! And the museum beneath that awesome span (okay, I know that was trite and a cliche). For Barb, the best of the experience was the sun coming out and illuminating the arch in shining stainless steel glory. For me, it was the movie showing the men who actually constructed the arch and each part of construction.

The Gateway to the West is as wide as she is tall. The tram to the top beckoned: https://www.gatewayarch.com/experience/

Then we saw the movie about building the arch, then toured the museum: https://www.gatewayarch.com/experience/#museum

There has been so much rain, the beautiful riverwalk is under water. The riverboats don’t have passengers because there is no access – that’s under water. It’s pretty crazy.

A crazy thing happened as we were strolling under the railroad bridge, down the cobblestone street. We discovered a van wedged under the 8′ ceiling of the bridge. We set about letting air out of the tires as a gaggle of kids on field trip from Tennessee worried and joggled around the bus. Several guys showed up and took over so we skedaddled off to Morgan’s Brewery for a beer after all that hard work.