June 16, 2013: Baldwin, Illinois to Cahokia Mounds to St. Louis to Grafton, Illinois

Happy Father's Day to all you dad's out there. 

We left our still-empty campground and headed north to the Cahokia Mounds World Heritage Site in Illinois, just outside of St. Louis.  Between 1000 and 1400 AD, this area had been a thriving city of 10,000 people who built huge mounds for burial sites and for their royalty to build houses upon.  They abandoned the site in the 1400s, probably due to a lack of natural resources.  As they cut the trees down for their massive 20,000 trunk stockade fence, building homes and burning wood for cooking, their primary meat food source (deer) would have moved further and further from the area.  Removing all trees would have contributed to erosion and the repetitive planting of corn would have depleted the land of nutrients, making food an increasingly difficult problem.  No one knows where these people went and scientists are prohibited by law from disturbing Native American graves so they cannot obtain DNA to determine which, if any, of the current tribes descended from these early people.

We climbed the 100 foot highest mound and could see the St. Louis skyline in the hazy distance.  We spent time in the visitor center that had excellent displays of this early culture, including many artifacts from the archaeological digs in the area.

Lots and lots of steps to get to the top

 

Afterwards, we headed into St. Louis right past the Arch (which we had visited on previous trips) to find a famous ice cream place that calls their specialty "concrete" because it is so thick.  Huge crowds and long lines assured us that it was worth the trip into downtown St. Louis to find the place.

We drove north out of St. Louis across both the Mississippi and Missouri rivers to an Illinois state park campground.  Our route took us along the Mississippi River where we could see the massive flooding that had taken place recently. 

Sandbags protecting a building in Alton, IL

We passed the famous Piasa bird that Marquette had documented when he came through the area on his way to exploring the Great Lakes.  The original drawing on the bluff walls are long gone, but folks have recreated it based on reported accounts of the Indian folktale.

The campground was nice and Jack got to watch the last of the Open, but no phone or internet.  We are so spoiled.