Day Five – Galena IL to Lake of the Ozarks MO
Miles: 472
Elapsed Time: 11:08
Breakfast was at the Victory Cafe on Main St. Mostly a local establishment and it was very good. We blasted south on IL84 following the Mississippi. We stopped after only about 30 miles at the Palisades Park overlook. We had a great view of Sweeney Island, Savanna Bay, Island 266, and up north to Buffalo Lake, and the Santa fe Island chain. This view made us realize how big the whole Mississippi River watershed is.
Continuing south on IL 84 we crossed over the river short of Savanna and we were in US 52 in Iowa. We stopped for gas in Clinton and caught US 30 and US 61 as we continued south. We went into Burlington to view the Riverwalk but there wasn’t much to see. We went down to the river at Fort Madison but there wasn’t much there either. It was getting well past noon and we were getting a little hungry so we stopped in Quincy at the Tilted Kilt on the river. Nothing great in terms of the river view but inside the restaurant there were some decent views. After Quincy we followed the river and stopped in Hannibal for some Mark Twain history. Although there are many historic places in Hannibal we chose the Lighthouse as our spot. It had nice views of the river.
We wanted to stay as far away as possible from St. Louis so we headed away from the river and ran through Jefferson City. We wanted to stop at the capital and a local brewery but we would save until 2015. Before we knew it we were in the Lake of the Ozarks region and looking for our condo. We were trying something completely new this year. Since there were no motels in the area we decided to look into Air BNB and try that system out. It worked great. We had a great condo on the lake that was less than almost any hotel and it was very spacious and we had a pool to ourselves. We had pizza delivered and sat at the pool. A very nice setup.
