Camping at Clark Ferry Recreation Area

We moved upriver to the Clark Ferry Recreation Area in Montpelier, Iowa. This is an Army Corps of Engineers facility right on the Mississippi River and if you have the national parks senior pass it is half price to use these campgrounds. We had a pull through site, which it only had 50 Amp electric. If you needed water, there was a faucet close by that could feed several sites and we had to use the dump station as we left.

North of St. Louis the depth of the Mississippi River varied so much that a system of locks and dams across the waterway had to be built to ensure a waterway that could be safely navigated year-round. Not too far south of here is lock installation and we were able to schedule a tour of the facility. The engineers were very friendly and the tour interesting. For some reason once we started the tour, for safety reasons we were not allowed to take photographs. However I managed to get a good shot of a big barge leaving the locks. The barges are so big that they actually have to separate the barges and pass half at a time and join them again below the lock.

It is amazing how much there is to do in this area ranging from the location of American Pickers, the largest truck stop in the US, a museum that covers the history of the pearl button industry and a collection of local events. We drove to Le Claire, IA to the home of Antique Archaeology AKA American Pickers. Unfortunately none of the main characters were there. I guess there is too much going on in their individual lives, but it was nice seeing where it all started. There were a few items of interest for sale but to me it looked like they only wanted to sell their promotional goods.

On another outing we discovered the largest Truck Stop in Iowa and possibly in the entire USA. It was difficult to appreciate just how large the facility was. The actual truck stop was a three-story building which offered retail store with possibly any item a trucker may want in their truck. In addition to showers there was a medical facility, a dentist office and a chapel. In a separate building was a huge antique truck musem that was free to the public. Sometime next year construction will be completed on an addition that will double the size of this museum.

On another venture we ended up in Muscatine, IA which is the home of a museum dedicated to the Pearl Button Industry. I never had any idea how large the pearl button industry was. In the early 1900’s the Mississippi River had a large population of freshwater clams that were rather large and extremely inedible. However, someone decided that they could make buttons out of the shell. This turned the area into a cottage industry at first and then grew into an industry. An interesting tidbit of information is that a pearl button will not feel warm when compared to plastic buttons. I held a bunch in my hand and they never got warm yet the plastic buttons never felt cool. Another use of pearl buttons was to decorate apparel and the more ornate the decoration the more elite the person was. The only drawback was that the pearls could not withstand the perils of being cleaned so each time the garment needed cleaning all of the decoration had to be removed!

When you are on the Mississippi River you are never too far from the influence of Samuel Clemmons and the building where we had lunch was proof of that. This was a rather large tribute to Mark Twain

In the campground the bulletin board had an advertisement for a farm nearby that offered buffalo meat and was supposed to have llamas to see. When we arrived, we were informed that there have not been any llamas for two years and at the moment they didn’t have a buffalo meat for sale but if we wanted to, we could walk down and look at their breeding herd. We were warned that there were two larger bulls that were very friendly and to our amazement one of them did walk up close enough to pet!

I still can’t believe how much we have done and we have hundreds of miles to go before getting home. Next stop somewhere on the road through Illinois.