River and Bayou

We rented an SUV and loaded it up yesterday. All my gear is in the back, the canoe is lashed down to the top.

Gloria is driving down with me today to Fort Pillow State Park in Tennessee. The plan is to camp overnight in the park, then drive the forty miles or so tomorrow morning to where I put my canoe in the River – at Ed Jones Boat Ramp, Hanes Point, Tennessee. It’s the exact same spot where I stopped paddling the River twenty years ago.

Fort Pillow State Park is over 560 miles from Woodstock, so we had a long day of driving. We got an early start around 6 AM and were in the St Louis metro area by noon. We stopped at the site of the former campus of my alma mater, Parks College, in Cahokia. Parks closed down almost thirty years ago, and the ravishes of time and vandalism had taken their toll on the old buildings and grounds that remained. Visiting the grounds brought back memories – but no sad emotions. I had seen photos of the remnants of the college online so knew what to expect. Still, I was surprised to see just how fast nature had reclaimed the campus and turned the old buildings and classrooms into a ghost town buried deep within the shrubs and trees that had re-capturing the once picturesque grounds.

Aside from a few stops to adjust the straps holding the canoe to the automobile’s roof, we arrived at Fort Pillow State Park around 6 PM without incident. The Park was empty and we had the tent campgrounds all to ourselves. We set up our tents, cleaned up, had dinner and crawled into our tents shorting after sunset.