Riverfront Park, Peoria

Posted on May 4, 2021 by admin

Another recent vaccination destination was Peoria. We spent about 24 hours on the trip, there in the afternoon and a return the next afternoon. Shortly after taking care of the shot at a local pharmacy, we took a walk along the Illinois River near downtown Peoria, including a paved section but also parkland.

Riverfront Park gives you some nice views of the Murray Baker Bridge, which carries I-74 across the river. It’s named for an early executive of Holt Manufacturing Co., later Caterpillar Tractor Co., who oversaw its move to Peoria in 1909.

For what I took to be a fairly old bridge (opened 1958), it looked spanking new, a handsome example of bridgebuilding. Turns out there was a reason for that.

“After a final countdown the lights were flicked on and the Murray Baker Bridge was re-opened to drivers of Central Illinois,” 25 Week reported on October 31 last year. “The bridge, which was shut down back in March, went through $42 million worth of renovations. Workers replaced the bridge deck, repaired the structural steel, repainted, and fixed the LED lights, which was one of the most anticipated changes.”

North of the bridge is a curiosity called Constitution Garden, dedicated to the U.S. Constitution.

Looks a little unkempt, at least this spring, and the plaque is dark. Someone’s comment on the state of our fundamental law?

Not far away, overlooking the river, is the Dan Fogelberg Memorial, which has been there since 2010. A couple was there when we arrived — a man and woman maybe a few years older than me — and they expressed their enthusiasm for the musician to us, and had me take their picture in front of the rocks. Then they offered to take our picture (Yuriko was elsewhere with the dog.)

I hadn’t realized Fogelberg was from Peoria, but he was. The rock to our left features lyrics from “Part of the Plan,” which I told Ann was one of his better-known songs. Behind me the middle rock had lyrics from “Icarus Ascending,” a song I didn’t know, and to our right the rock says:

Dedicated to the legacy of
Dan Fogelberg
Musician, Singer, Songwriter, Artist
Born in Peoria August 13th
1951 – 2007

With some lines from “River of Souls,” another song I didn’t know. I liked Fogelberg well enough when I heard him on the radio, but I didn’t listen to him much beyond that, except for the album Phoenix (1979), which one of my college roommates had and I listened to occasionally. “Face the Fire” on that album has the distinction of being an anti-nuke song — nuclear power, that is, not bombs, clearly inspired by Three Mile Island.

Its lyrics didn’t make it onto a rock, unsurprisingly, since I suppose “The poison is spreading, the demon is free/People are running from what they can’t even see” wouldn’t have the right vibe for his memorial. More surprising is no mention of “Same Old Land Syne,” considering that’s a Christmastime sentimental favorite on the radio even now.

West Tennessee Dash

Posted on April 20, 2021 by admin

On April 10, after leaving Illinois via a white-knuckle, two-lane bridge across the Mississippi into the state of Missouri, I headed south to catch the ferry back across the river at Hickman, Kentucky (green arrow). The point of this exercise was to continue from Hickman on small roads to the Kentucky Bend, marked here with a pink arrow.

There’s nothing distinctive about the Kentucky Bend except its odd status as an exclave of the commonwealth of Kentucky. I’d planned to snap a picture of whatever sign was at the Tennessee-Kentucky border at that point, and maybe visit the small cemetery just inside the bend.

It wasn’t to be. When I got to the ferry, the Mississippi looked a mite testy, swollen from the storms the night before, and probably other spring rains. A phone call confirmed that the ferry wasn’t running.

Without the ferry crossing, visiting the Kentucky Bend would have meant considerable backtracking, so I blew it off, and continued southward in Missouri. I got a glimpse of the bend from the riverfront at New Madrid, but I didn’t linger because I needed to find a bathroom.

Later I crossed into Tennessee on I-155 and soon connected with U.S. 51, which goes straight into Memphis. Despite the years I lived in Tennessee once upon a time, it was a part of the state I’d never seen, except for Memphis itself.

I didn’t quite make the straight shot into the city. Not far from U.S. 51 is Fort Pillow State Historic Park, site of the Battle of Fort Pillow, also known as the Fort Pillow Massacre, on bluffs overlooking the Mississippi. It’s been a state park for 50 years now. The day was as brilliant and warm as a spring day could be by that time, a contrast from the cool rain and less lush conditions further north.

I only spent a little while at the museum and visitor center, but got the impression that the bloody history of Fort Pillow isn’t emphasized. Be that as it may, I was keen to see whatever was left of the fort, or what had been rebuilt. Signs pointed the way.

An longer interpretive sign at this clearing said Nathan Bedford Forrest set up his command there.

On the trail went.

It would have been nice had the FORT –> signs said how far was left to go. Also, I couldn’t quite follow the track I was taking, as compared to the map I acquired at the visitors center, which was a little unusual. Anyway, I climbed another couple of rises and came to a spot where I could just barely see the river.

I figured surely there must be earthworks or something at such a high point, but I didn’t see anything. Then I noticed another FORT –> sign pointing me down another staircase. That meant I’d have to go up again somewhere, because forts aren’t built in lower places. Then to return, I’d have go down and then up again. I didn’t have the energy for all that, I decided, so I made my way back. Still, I had a good walk. By the end of the day, I’d walked about two and a half miles.

Besides, I wanted to get to Memphis. When I arrived about an hour later, I found a spot in Mud Island Park with a view of the skyline.

The Hernando de Soto Bridge. More bridges ought to be named after explorers.

Back on the mainland, I found the Memphis Pyramid. It wasn’t hard to spot.

Or more formally, Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid.

Taller than the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico, according to this source, but somehow that ancient Mesoamerican structure has much more of a presence. The Memphis Pyramid has been standing for 30 years now, and seems to be making it as a retail store, after failing as a municipal arena.

The blue-lit structure is an elevator to a view from the top of the pyramid.

Probably worth the price, but the line was long, so I headed for the exit. But I couldn’t leave without buying something to support the Memphis Pyramid, so I bought a box of Moon Pies.

Southern Illinois Going and Coming Back

Posted on April 19, 2021 by admin

I spent the first 24 hours of my recent trip, as well as the last 18 hours or so, in southern Illinois. Not far from Carbondale, in Shawnee National Forest, is Pomona Natural Bridge, which is the first place I went after a drive down from metro Chicago.

The official trail is a short loop from the parking lot to the natural bridge.

The trail goes over the top of the bridge.

Which looks like this from another angle. You can climb steps down to under the bridge, and that’s what I did.

Though a short trail, the drop to under the bridge is a little steep, and I navigated it carefully, testing my new hiking shoes and walking stick in the field. They proved useful.

The road to the natural bridge passes some farms, complete with an array of rusting equipment, available any time for spare parts.

This building, forgotten by time, stood next to a crossroads.

The next morning, April 10, I drove south, eventually passing through the ruin that is Cairo, Illinois, pop. 2,000 or so, a town that never became St. Louis or Cincinnati or even Cape Girardeau or Quincy, despite its location. One hundred years ago, more than 15,000 people lived there.

Sure, it’s still technically a functioning municipality, and the houses off the main street show that people still call Cairo home, but the main street was like a little piece of the early ’80s Bronx had landed here in low-lying southern Illinois: a parade of empty lots, rubble, recently burned structures, and otherwise vacant buildings, with a scattering of intact buildings, mostly part of one level of government or another, including the handsome public library. Mine was the only moving car, and I saw only two pedestrians.

I acquainted myself with a number of small towns on this trip, also including New Madrid, Mo., Clarksdale and Vicksburg, Miss., Paris, Tex., Van Buren, Ark., and Belleville, Ill., all at least a little more prosperous than the forlorn Cairo.

At the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers is the 191-acre Fort Defiance State Park, known as Camp Defiance during the war. When I passed by, the park was closed by high water. Too bad. I wanted to see the confluence.

On the night of April 17, I arrived in Belleville, my last stop before returning home. The next morning I strolled along the town’s well-to-do main street, which is populated by restaurants, one-off retailers, and law and other professional offices. No one else was around.

Before leaving town, I stopped at the Cathedral of St. Peter.

The original church was completed in 1866, but in 1912 the building nearly burned to the ground. Rebuilding gave it a Gothic style patterned after the Exeter Cathedral in Devon, though its vaulted ceiling isn’t as elaborate.

A few miles away is the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows, a complex featuring not only a large shrine, but also a church, Lordes-style grotto, gardens, conference center, gift shop, residence hall, restaurant and hotel.

The shrine as seen from the slope in front of it.

The design screams 1960 and sure enough, there’s a cornerstone with that date on it. Construction began in 1958 and finished that year, with a design by one Richard Cummings, a 1952 Washington University graduate who worked at the St. Louis firm of Maguolo & Quick at the time.

“It is easily the most Space Age-fabulous building in the region,” asserts Built St. Louis. “Seated at the bottom of a hill that forms a natural amphitheater, the main shrine of Our Lady of the Snows is a complex arrangement of curved forms and overlapping, intertwined spaces, a sort of High Googie architectural style.”

At the back of the shrine are some fine mosaics. Always good to find mosaics.

At the top of the slope is Millennium Spire, a work installed in 1998.

The shrine is a project of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, whom I’ve run across before in San Antonio, location of their school of theology. No Space Age-fabulous structures there that I recall.

St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church and Cemetery

Posted on March 15, 2021 by admin

Saturday was warm and pleasant, Sunday raw and unpleasant, and today — Ides of March Snow. If Rome had had a few inches that day, Caesar might have stayed home, since the rarity of snow would surely have been a warning not to do any official business. Oh, well.

Except for scattered dirty piles in parking lots, all of the massive February snows had melted by March 14. The March 15 snow will last a few days at most, due to a warming trend predicted for later in the week.

Illinois has a few hills, typically relics of ancient glacial movements. Built on top of one of them, in the village of Lemont, is St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church, which got its start in historic times — but still quite a while ago, in the 1830s.

On the slope of the hill is the church cemetery. One side of the hill — maybe better to call it a ridge — is quite steep, yet still sports stones.

The rest of the family had other things to do during the day on Saturday, which as mentioned turned out to be clear and warm, so I headed south for a look around the suburban stretch of Archer Avenue (Illinois 171) between Lemont and the village of Justice.

The urban section of Archer Avenue, “Archey Road,” was the haunt of Mr. Dooley once upon a time, but that’s a matter best left for others to describe (if you feel like paying for access).

In our time, suburban Archer Avenue is a thoroughfare featuring independent and chain restaurants, small office buildings, auto repair shops, liquor stores, churches, schools, municipal facilities, and vast cemeteries. The surrounding forest preserve lands are even larger, the further out you go.

St. James at Sag Bridge is near the junction of Archer Avenue and the north-south Illinois 83, which (to the north) is one of the main transit spines of DuPage County. St. James’ hill also rises near the triple waterways of the Des Plaines River, the manmade Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, and an older manmade leftover of the 19th-century canal-building boom, the tiny-by-comparison Illinois & Michigan Canal.

To the south of the church and cemetery is yet another artificial waterway, the early 20th century Calumet Sag Channel, which gives the area its name, Sag Bridge, for a predecessor bridge of the one that now carries 171/83 across the channel. The Calumet Sag connects the Calumet River system with the Sanitary and Ship Canal, which it joins just to the west of the church. It’s a complicated bit of geography that I was only vaguely aware of before I decided to examine this part of Archer Avenue.

Sag? I wondered about that as well. The full name of the canal is the Calumet-Saganashkee Channel. I didn’t know that either, but learning it generated another question, as is often the case. Saganashkee?

Named after a local feature with a modified Indian name, it seems: Saganashkee Slough, which is a lake on forest preserve land in the area.

“A case in point is Saganashkee Slough,” the Chicago Tribune reported in 1994. “It was formerly a huge swamp that extended from west of 104th Avenue to the limits of Blue Island, and its original name, Ausaganashkee, is a Potawatomi Indian word that means ‘slush of the earth,’ wrote former Forest Preserve District general superintendent Cap Sauer in a historical account written in the late 1940s.

“During the construction of the I&M Canal in the 1830s, a feeder ditch was dug in the swamp that helped supply additional water to the canal. The slough was almost destroyed in the 1920s by blasting during the construction of the Cal-Sag Channel. Saganashkee was reconstructed by the forest preserve district, although in much smaller form, Berg said. At 325 acres, it is still, however, one of the largest bodies of water in the district.”

As for St. James, the church was founded to serve workers, mostly Irishmen, who were building the Illinois and Michigan Canal, with the current structure completed in the 1850s. A place to go Sunday morning after Saturday night revels, and sometimes donnybrooks, at least according to Irish stereotypes. I suspect the congregation is a good deal more diverse these days.

It’s a handsome limestone building, built from material from nearby Lemont-Sag quarries, which provided stone for Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago and the Chicago Water Tower besides. I understand the St. James interior is quite beautiful, but it was locked when I visited.

The Our Lady of the Forest grotto on the grounds was, of course, open for a look.

Compared with the church building, the grotto is new, built in 1998 for the for the 165th anniversary of the parish. See grottos when you can.

Bemis Woods

Posted on January 25, 2021 by admin

This is the funniest thing I saw over the weekend.
A recycling container belonging to the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. As soon as I saw it, I had the urge to peek inside. You’d expect three separate spaces, right? No. Everything goes into the same large space.

We were at Bemis Woods, a forest preserve in Westchester, Illinois, a western suburb just to the east of the DuPage County line and I-294.
We walked from the parking lot to the green trail, then the red trail, then the purple trail, then on the road back to the parking lot. About a mile and a half in all. The trails were a little treacherous.
The snow cover was thin, and where previous walkers had been, some of the snow had been scuffed enough to re-freeze as ice. Some parts of the trail were well covered with slippery zones, others less so.

Evidence of many other walkers, people and dogs, was easy to spot.
Still, it was a good walk through the woods at just below freezing.

We crossed Salt Creek twice. Once at a footbridge. The view from there.
Once along Wolf Road.
A good walk, but summer’s better on the whole. As it is for most things. The last time I was near Bemis — a little to the west, that time — was in August more than two years ago.

The Latest NP

Posted on January 11, 2021 by admin

What, another national park? Don’t we have enough? (This makes 63.)

I’m referring to New River Gorge National Park and Reserve in West Virginia, which sounds like a fine place to visit, including the bridge. But does it need to be a national park? Wasn’t national river good enough?

The new designation was tucked away in the latest omnibus federal budget, a document probably as sprawling and wild as some of the larger national parks. Maybe there’s also something there about a new park on the Moon, though I expect that would go against the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. Then again, could be that the treaty is silent on that question.

Sparta, Wisconsin

Posted on September 15, 2020 by admin

After leaving La Crosse on September 6, we spent time driving some picturesque Driftless Area roads, but soon we were feeling the pull of lunch. That is, we wanted to find a place to eat. We arrived in Sparta, Wisconsin, and started looking around. Doing it the old fashioned way — not with a search engine or an electronic map, but by keeping our eyes peeled as we drove.

Sometimes you get lucky. Right in the middle of town, on W. Wisconsin St., we found Ruby’s. We stopped right away.

Ruby’s has a most traditional drive-in menu, with one exception.
Between the three of us, we ate a satisfying drive-in lunch: a chili cheese & onion dog, a grilled cheese sandwich, onion rings, cheese curds (this is Wisconsin, after all) and the unusual item: a walnut burger.

As the menu explains, it’s “seasoned walnut & cheese patty with lettuce, tomato, pickle & honey mustard on a whole wheat kaiser bun.” I had a bite. It was tasty. The menu also notes “the Historic Trempealeau Hotel” above the Walnut Burger description, presumably as its provenance. Naturally, I looked it up. The boutique hotel, dating from the late 19th century, is still around, on the Mississippi upriver some distance from La Crosse in a burg called Trempealeau.

Rudy’s also sports a fiberglass statue. A bear on roller skates.
Unlike Gambrinus, I suspect the bear is holding a mug of root beer. Rudy’s has a special section for that on the menu, including a root beer float, but not beer.

While we ate, I noticed another statue, much larger — or at least taller — than the bear. It was across the street catercorner from Ruby’s, in a park.

Of course I had to go see that, after we ate. The Sparta Downtown River Trail runs through the park.
At this point, a footbridge crosses the small La Crosse River, which eventually empties into the Mississippi in the city of that name.
On the other side of the bridge is the statue I saw from across the street.

It has a name: Ben Bikin’. Sparta, pop. just shy of 10,000, is the self-proclaimed Bicycling Capital of America. A nice local distinction. I imagined that Sparta might have been a bicycle manufacturing town at one time, maybe as long ago as the bicycle craze of the ’90s that popularized the modern bike. The 1890s, that is.

But no. “Sparta’s claim as the ‘Bicycling Capital of America’ is based upon the first rail bed in Wisconsin to be converted to bike trails between Sparta and Elroy,” says the city’s web site. That trail was completed in 1967, so fanciful penny-farthing statues aside, the town sobriquet isn’t that old.

In fact, I don’t remember seeing any more bicycles in Sparta, or dedicated bike lanes, than in any other small town. That is to say, not many. There is, however, a bicycle museum in town.

More than that: the Deke Slayton Memorial Space and Bicycle Museum. I knew it was closed, but we drove by before leaving town anyway.
Slayton, the only Mercury astronaut who never flew in a Mercury capsule, grew up on a farm near Sparta. So he’s the town’s other attenuated claim to fame. The thinking must have been, best to combine the two into one (slightly) larger museum. Well, why not?

Fremont Avenue ’15

Posted on August 30, 2020 by admin

Near the end of August 2015, I spent a few hours wandering around the Fremont neighborhood in Seattle. One place I went was Fremont Avenue, which ran roughly from where I was staying in Upper Fremont down to the rest of the neighborhood.

It’s one thing to tag a lonely wall somewhere, but a street sign? Wankers.

I was footloose and had a camera, so I took pictures of whatever caught my eye along the street.

Not something you see often. Or ever. An orange Bel Air station wagon.
With a sleek hood ornament.
Travel far enough south on Fremont Ave. and you’ll come to the Fremont Bridge.
“Today, with traffic across the bridge a constant, the bridge opens around 35 times [daily], often creating long waits for drivers,” notes Atlas Obscura, which asserts that it is the most-opened drawbridge in the country.

Ottawa Sights (Not the One in Canada)

Posted on July 28, 2020 by admin

We arrived in Ottawa, Illinois, on Saturday in time for lunch. We decided on carry-out from Thai Cafe on Columbus St., which seems to be the only Thai joint in town. At a population of 18,000 or so, maybe that’s all Ottawa can support.

We took our food to Allen Park, a municipal park on the south bank of the Illinois, and found a picnic shelter. The river’s large and on a weekend in July, home to a lot of pleasure craft.
Sometimes, the river must be angry, such as on April 19, 2013. Got a lot of rain in northern Illinois about then, so I believe it.

Downstream a bit is the Ottawa Rail Bridge, which rates a page in Wikipedia. The current bridge dates from 1898, though it was modified in 1932.

Two large metal sculptures rise in the park, both by Mary Meinz Fanning. The red one is “Bending.”
The yellow one is “Reclining.”
“Fanning was the driving force behind the creation of the red and yellow steel sculptures at Allen Park by the Illinois River in Ottawa,” says a 2010 article in The Times, which seems to be a local paper.

“The 40-foot-tall sculptures, which weigh 17 tons each, were erected in 1982 and 1983 from parts of the 1933-built steel girder Hilliard Bridge that was demolished in 1982 to make way for the present-day Veterans Memorial Bridge. Fanning died of illness Nov. 4, 1995, in Ottawa at age 48.”

Just as you enter the park, you also see a wooden sculpture: one of artist Peter Toth’s “Whispering Giants,” which I’d forgotten I’d heard of till I looked him up again. The one in Allen Park is Ho-Ma-Sjah-Nah-Zhee-Ga or, more ordinarily, No. 61.

Looked familiar. I realized I’ve seen one before —
That one is Nee-Gaw-Nee-Gaw-Bow or No. 59, and we saw it by chance in Wakefield, Mich. about three years ago. Apparently the artist has put up at least one in each state.

Ottawa has a place in U.S. history mainly for two things. One that the town is happy to celebrate: the first Lincoln-Douglas debate in 1858. The other is the awful story of the Radium Girls, poisoned by luminous paint at a clock factory in Ottawa in the early 20th century. For a long time, there was no public acknowledgment of that incident. Now there is. But I didn’t know the Radium Girls have a statue in town (since 2011), so we missed that.

We didn’t miss the site of the Lincoln-Douglas debate, which is in the shady, square-block Washington Park.
Lincoln and Douglas are there as part of a fountain to memorialize the event. They were cast in bronze in 2002 by Rebecca Childers Caleel.
It would have been more pleasant if the fountain were on, but maybe it was dry for public health reasons in our time. The noontime heat was oppressive, so we didn’t have a leisurely look-around the area as much as we might have otherwise. There are other memorials in the park, and plenty of historic structures nearby, forming the Washington Park Historic District.

Those buildings include the Third District Appellate Court Building (1850s), the Reddick Mansion (1850s), the Ottawa First Congregational Church (1870), Christ Episcopal Church (1871), and a Masonic Temple (1910). A few blocks away, the LaSalle County Courthouse looked interesting, too, but we only drove by.

I managed to take a close look only at the former Congregational Church building.

Gothic Revival in brick. These days, the church is part of the Open Table United Church of Christ.

UVA, Part 1: Rugby Road

Posted on October 27, 2019 by admin

We arrived behind the Rotunda of the University of Virginia at about 4 pm on October 13. Under cloudy skies, but the day was warm and good for walking around the picturesque campus. Even parking had been relatively painless, and at no cost, on a street a few blocks away.

We walked down Rugby Road to get to the Rotunda. At one point, we crossed a bridge over railroad tracks. A specific message had been painted on the inside of one of the safety walls.
There was evidence of repeated painting.
Later, as we walked back to the car, I got a good look at the other side of the bridge.
Local tradition. I figured it had to be. Didn’t take long to find an article about the bridge — Beta Bridge — in UVA Today.

“For instance, one of the most notable landmarks on Grounds, Beta Bridge, has been at the center of its own tradition since just the latter half of the 20th century.

“Often brightly colored with hand-lettered messages spanning its length, the bridge carrying Rugby Road over the C&O Railroad tracks over the years has become the place for paintbrush-wielding students to express themselves.”

I don’t know whether Riley accepted or declined the proposal, or even if it was serious, but I was able to look up the unfortunate fate of Henry McDavid Reed. He was a UVA student who died of brain cancer in August.

That’s not all I found out about Rugby Road, which has a number of frat houses on it, and passes by the university’s art museum and architecture school, among other things. It’s also the title of a UVA drinking song, mostly sung to the tune of Charles Ives’ “Son of a Gambolier.”

Its first verse no doubt includes some of the cleaner lyrics:

From Rugby Road to Vinegar Hill, we’re gonna get drunk tonight.
The faculty’s afraid of us, they know we’re in the right,
So fill your cups, your loving cups, as full as full can be.
And as long as love and liquor last, we’ll drink to the U. of V.

The version on YouTube also has a verse that I suspect is left out these days.

All you girls from Mary Washington and RMWC,
Never let a Virginia man an inch above your knee.
He’ll take you to his fraternity house and fill you full of beer,
And soon you’ll be the mother of a bastard Cavalier!

RMWC would be Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, which is now simply Randolph College. Mary Washington is the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

If I’d thought about collegiate drinking songs when I was in college, I probably would have considered them hopelessly old fashioned — and that was 40 years ago. Maybe I didn’t hang out with the right crowd. Or the wrong crowd, take your pick.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Bridges