East of the Miississippi River

I had an unsatisfying but necessary nap at the I80 Truck Stop (World's Largest).  It was hot, and unbearably humid.  I'll try to stop talking about the humidity.  I was expecting it, knew it would be here, but wow. 

I needed to be near Peru, Illinois for a morning meet up with my freight customer, so I hit the road for the 100 mile drive to La Salle / Peru.  I had farted around longer than I should have at the truck stop (I'll update that post momentarily), and it was after midnight by the time I got rolling, but the truth is I am a night person.  I do my best work later in the day, and my best driving at night.  I had to be there in any case, so I headed out.  GPS routed me off 80 onto 280E for some reason before connecting back up to I 80 E.  I'll have to look at a map to see why it did that, but I made it here, so I guess it was right. [Update:  checked the map and I see that I 80 makes a sharp southward bend not far after Walcott, so it saved me some distance by cutting off that angle via I280E.]

I was tooling along, not really paying attention, when I saw the sign for the Mississippi River.  Then I was on a bridge.  I was confused.  I guess I lost track of where the Mississippi is and that I'd have to cross it.  I thought, wait, is that Mississippi River, as in Mississippi River?  A peculiar feeling came over me as I realized I was crossing that legendary waterway.  It was broad and smooth there, and the water stretched out glimmering in the dark as I looked upstream to other bridges that were lit, and various lights that might have been watercraft or river structures or bridges. 

And then there was the sign for Illinois, because the state boundary runs right down the river (which I only realize now that I've looked it up).  I was on the other side, and I realized that I was now East of the Mississippi, and I really was a long, long way from home, into the other part of my country, a world even farther than the high plains that greeted me on the east side of the Continental Divide.  But I am not in another world.  I am right here, in my own country, with my own people, who have proved to me time and time again on this trip that they are there if I need them.