Back Road to Boonville

Last day of Spring. It has been a strange year -- we seem to be a few weeks ahead of schedule in the season. Although the calendar says June 19th it seems like mid July. We had a nice rain a few days ago and everything "greened up" a little. I decided to take a drive up Mo. Highway 179/87 between Jefferson City and Boonville. This route follows the bluff-tops along the south side of the Missouri River and then breaks out across the prairie. I was going to take a bunch more pictures but my camera ran out of juice.

Marion Missouri -- Missouri River Access.  This is a good place to stop and get right down to the river. Marion is a tiny town but it was once the county seat back in log cabin days. Bommercial fisherman still work the Missouri River and you can sometimes find them here at Marion. Another small toen a little farther up the road is Sandy Hook. Both towns have only eight or ten houses and they are sometimes flooded out when the river comes up. The highway is often closed at Sandy Hook during flood season.

Lewis and Clark noted this place on their way up the river. Manitou Rock, a high river bluff and Moniteau Creek (Frenchified version?) are located here. The term "Manitou" held some religious significance among the local Indian tribes.

The Missouri River tends to build large sand bars at this location that sometimes seem to take up almost the whole river.

This highway is on old route -- probably parts of it go back to pre-settlement days. There are Indian burial mounds along the river bluffs. It was an old stage coach road, maybe a post road, that connected Jefferson City to the Boonville and the "Boone's Lick" area. I guess that was for folks who didn't want to take a steamboat. Union Pacific has a rail line that runs along the edge of the river.

Jamestown Missouri is a small town in Moniteau County with the usual bar, cafe, hardware store, beauty salon, bank and antique store....not to mention several churches. It has some local notoriety because of the large number of twins born here. I have a friend who moved to Jamestown and it wasn't long before she gave birth to twins...the local school is full of twins. The road west out of Jamestown is like a small roller coaster.

This is Amish Country. You can tell that by the "Share the Road" highway signs that have a horse-drawn buggy on them. You can also tell by the squished road apples that appear in the middle of the lane. The Plain People have been moving into west-central Missouri and this is a relatively new development for this area. You need to be watchful when driving some of these highways.  Not only because of the buggies and wagons but because of the farm equipment that often takes up most of the width of the highway. Although there was almost no traffic, people drive too fast and I saw a car resting on it's roof on the side of the road from a recent accident. County sheriff was checking out the wreck.

This part of the road (Highway 87) leaves the river bluffs and heads across the prairie to the town of Prairie Home, another small Missouri farmers' town much like Jamestown but with fewer twins, I guess.

Got Hay?  Apparently so. This is pretty farm country. Lots of horses in the pastures...more than I recall seeing before. Maybe that's part of the Amish colonization of the area...more horses.

Unfortunately, this is where my camera conked out. It was a pretty day.