On the River: Today is what long-time cruisers call a “sea day” which designates a day we are not in port. Our next port is Hannibal, MO, where we’ll be tomorrow. That’s Mark Twain country, for sure.
Today we’ll motor past Quincy, IL, about which I wrote yesterday. We’ve left the “upper Midwest” and are getting to land over which the North and South fought some 160 years ago.
My dad’s ancestors wore the gray uniform. Great granddad on my father’s mother’s side - an army physician - probably cut off a bunch of legs and arms. That was a surgery some men actually survived in those pre-antisepsis days.
John Wesley Powell who led the first expedition down the Grand Canyon, was missing an arm he lost in the war. One armed he would climb the canyon wall to improve his view for the canyon map he was drafting for the government. He was a tough old bird, a real explorer.
