A short blog post on Cape Girardeau, a pretty little port town on the mighty Mississippi. The reason I am doing this short post is due to the fact that the next post (St Louis) has over 1000 photos I am yet to cut back. But for now enjoy the sights of ‘The Cape’.
As you can see in the first photo (part of a mural I’ll get to shortly) the Cape is on the confluence of 5 states. Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and Missouri. When we booked online into our RV park here we expected a small town at best but thankfully we were wrong. If the Cape should look a bit familiar to you then you may have seen the best mystery film in decades, “Gone Girl” with Ben Affleck & Rosamund Pike. Most of the film was shot here. This region also has a strong naval history going back to the American Civil War.
Following a short rest after arriving we decided to duck into town for a quick peak. We only had 2 nights here. The first thing you see is the large Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge which crosses the river into Illinois. In the CBD area itself there is a high levee wall to protect the town from the inevitable floods that occur here. At an opening in the wall there are a few historical buildings but yoy can’t help notice the flood markings on the gate post. You can read that 4 of the worst 7 floods happened in just the last 7 years. Not wanting a bland block wall the locals have decorated both sides of the wall with fantastic murals. On the river side is a depiction of the towns growth while on the opposite side there are two murals. The larger stretches for several hundred metres and notes important events in the city’s development. The second shows a range of famous people who have some connection with the region. I’ll leave you to enjoy these pictorials. Oh yeah! I have thrown in one pic of Shane having her ‘dip’ in the Mississippi at the start of the murals.
The next day we were advised to take a drive out to Sikeston and Mound City and to experience a meal at “Lambert’s, The Home Of The Throwed Rolls”. This proved to be another American Oddity we can highly recommend (as long as you can catch). A result of its success Lamberts has expended to a multi-hall ‘barn’. I hope you can zoom in on the menu to read the mid-American food fare. Inside the first lobby you can spend hours just going over the memorabilia that adorns the walls. The entire restaurant is a museum in itself. From here your host will escort you to a bench type table where you await service. However even before the waiter/waitress takes you order there are staff wandering up & down the aisles handing out food morsels as requested. When we said we hadn’t yet ordered the reply was “so what? You don’t need plates here”. He then ripped off a few sheets of paper towel from a roll on the table and dumped a ladle full of deep fried ocra (what isn’t dep fried here?) from the “pass arounds” section of the menu. Shane ordered Golden Fried Chicken while I had BBQ Ribs. All the time we ate there were staff walking the aisles offering more “pass arounds” but the feature of Lamberts is the ‘throwed rolls’. You’ll see a photo of one young bloke whose arm is in motion. His job was to walk a trolley of hot, fresh from the oven bread rolls around and call out “hot rolls, who wants a hot roll”. If you do you just put up your hand and he literally throws it to you. All meal there were bread rolls flying from one side of the room to the other, often more than 10 metres away. If you couldn’t catch it everyone cat calls you and another rocket comes flying at you. The whole thing is a huge laugh and a most enjoyable time. The rotund young staff member pictured was the most knowledgeable person of Australiana we’ve found in the USA. Well, he knew about Qld anyway or to be more exact, he knew all about Steve, Terri, Bindi and Robert and the Australia Zoo.
After an hilarious lunch we drove to Mound City where some more naval history lives. This is the home of the “IronClads” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI0IOERrnKY and https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/steel-steam ). With time eroding fast we moved on to Mound City National Cemetery. Over the past few months we have learnt quite a bit about the American Civil War but we were shocked to find the final count od the dead was around 700,000 men. This cemetery is the resting place not only of Civil War dead but of many military persons right up to current times. This is another fine example of America honouring their military people.
Well that’s it for this post. We’ll be home in Australia in under 2 weeks for Xmas before returning here for New Years’ eve then continuing the trip. Consequently the next post or two might be a bit late but I’ll try to get them out asap. Until then take care. Cheers for now.
Garry & Shane
Most interesting about the subs, it was a Gato class that rescued my Uncle from under the japs nose in the pacific, I will have to dig into my files and see which boat it was, he was an Australian Commando….
Shit Ian. I’d love to hear more about that. HAd I have known I may have been able to do some searching for you.
Well sorry to say the boat that rescued my Uncle while a Gato Class, USS Guardfish SS217, it wasn’t built there but at Groton, Connecticut……….but still an interesting sub story on where they were built so far inland.