Keokuk, Iowa

While driving to our next campground, drove through Burlington, Iowa to the newest bridge across the Mississippi River. The MacArthur Bridge is a dual tower cable suspension bridge, there is also a new railroad bridge being built near this bridge.



Burlington is also home of Snake Alley declared by Ripley's "Believe it or Not" as the crookest street in the world. Snake Alley consists of five 180 degree curves in a distance of 275 feet, while rising 58.3 feet between two parallel streets.



After arriving at the next campground, we set up and left to drive into town, we are only here for two nights, and not much time to see things. We had driven down to the river and over to the Lock & Dam #19, which is the highest step at 38 feet and is the second longest Mississippi lock at 1200 feet and can handle a full-length fleet of barges, 15 in total.



While standing on the observation deck, we saw one full barge, (15 barges), and one small barge, (2 barges), going through the locks before a huge cruise ship came through. They tell us that the cost to ride this ship is $1,000 a day, not in my lifetime will I get to ride this. The people on the ship were very friendly, waving and talked a little to us. We stood here for about 2 hours, waiting for the cruise ship to g through. We also saw this ship in Davenport and Burlington.



Notice the smokestacks are down, there is an electric plant at this dam and power lines are overhead, so they must put the stacks down to go through the lock.



This morning, we left and visited Nauvoo, Illinois. This is an old town where The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -Day Saints (Mormons) lived before being chased out of the area. They settled here after being forced out of Ohio and Missouri, and before going onto Utah. We had watched an historian movie and then took a wagon ride through town. After our wagon ride we had a chance to tour the town on our own.










This is the temple where they worship.
This evening we had a ladies night out, we went back to Nauvoo, had buffet dinner at Hotel Nauvoo and then went to a show that the missionaries that work in town put on for the public to watch.







The men had a pizza party and the drivers meeting while the ladies where away, moving again tomorrow.
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