Day Three - Be careful What You Ask For

Post by R

If you read my blog entry immediately preceding this one, you'll know that I was anxious to get away from the mid-eighties temperatures I experienced in the south. Today started out warm and sunny, and before noon the RAV-4's thermometer displayed 81 degrees. I had the air conditioner on for most of the morning and mid-afternoon. It was sunny and calm for a while, but that changed. As I made my way through Missouri the clouds came back, the wind picked up ferociously, and the temperature kept dropping. An intense downpour in western Missouri slowed traffic to a crawl for a while, and also prompted me to replace the windshield wipers. 

When I arrived in Kansas City, it was the beginning of Rush hour and I-70 was packed. I had intended to take I-70 to Denver, as I had done in the past, but the nagging voice on my GPS told me that the quickest way to Lander was to head North to Nebraska and I-80. I willingly obeyed the GPS. I'd never taken that route from Kansas City to Lincoln, NE, so a new and different experience won the day. Soon after I crossed the Nebraska border I noticed that the thermometer displayed a low for the day of 38 degrees. That's quite a change over the course of a few hours. I opened my duffel and pulled out my jacket and wool hat. No more wishing I had brought shorts along. I was happy though, since I didn't have to use the air conditioner in the car. Santo Domingo is going to be an adjustment for me.

I remember when I drove through St. Louis in the past that the I-80 route "highlights" some of the more decrepit parts of the city. It began on the Illinois side of the river, where an enormous corpse of a once great factory stood with it's brick smokestacks, completely vacant and desolate from decades of abandon. You could still see the "Armour" painted on one stack, so I'm guessing it was once a meat processing/packing facility. After crossing the mighty Mississippi (on an incongruously beautiful bridge), the traveler is treated to several miles of utter urban blight. Homes and factories that were beautifully built of brick over 100 years ago were vacant and windowless. Proud, optimistic, and skilled people built those buildings at one time, but their time has passed.  I'm thinking that the spiritual, and perhaps in some cases, biological descendants of those people now live in Wentzville, a beautiful and thriving town on the western fringe of the St. Louis. I stopped there for lunch and fuel and couldn't help notice the stark contrast. A tale of two cities so to speak.

In many cities, young people have moved in and revived the old sections. Gentrification. It's sort of an arrogant term, but you can't argue with the results. I'm sure that is happening in some parts of St. Louis, but not the parts I could see.

The rural areas and farms in all of the states I have been through are always beautiful, and always a breath of fresh air. Perhaps instead of encroaching on farmland when building the next suburb, we should focus on building/rebuilding in our already established cities. Kind of like Europe - and Portland, Oregon! Oh well, time to get off of my soap box.