Impromptu Road Trip

I had planned to do an iPhone Post but the WordPress app wouldn’t upload and now I can’t figure out how to delete the draft post. I took some pics with the iPhone camera but the WordPress app gave me an invalid image error when I tried to upload the post. So I don’t know. I am disappointed. What’s the point of the app if I can’t post on the go?

My friend Sue and I drove up to Grafton. Today was one of those days that was sunny, partly cloudy, dark, gray and rainy. Just depended what time it was and where you happened to be.

Halo effect produced using the Camerabag app for iPhone

The weather was fine when we got up to Grafton. This town lies on the river’s edge on a mountain side. Sue wanted to drive through some of the “neighborhoods.” I was a little relunctant. I told her I wasn’t really into the whole Deliverance experience. I said if it starts rockin’ the weird-shit-o-meter we are turnin’ around! Seriously though, it’s a gorgeous. The bluffs along the Mississippi are breathtaking. This area boasts some of the most spectacular views of the river valley.

We stopped for lunch but I won’t say where because it was awful and it tore up my stomach. Suffice it to say, I won’t be going back there. If for some reason I do (like I’m riding Sea-Doos on the river) I’ll make sure I only order one of the frozen appetizers that gets dropped into the fat fryer. Can’t really screw that up. We headed back down towards Alton and that’s when the weather turned stormy.

At first it was just a light sprinkling of rain

Roadside construction gets rained out

That turned into a pretty decent downpour. Apparently flooding this past spring/summer washed out parts of the road bed.

Gray day on the Mississippi

So we headed to Alton. About 8 or 9 years ago, we can’t even remember, Sue and I took a “haunted tour” of Alton and one of the stops was the McPike Mansion. We stopped by today and it looked exactly the same as I remembered it. Right down to the chairs out front.

McPike Mansion - Alton, IL

It was short a road trip. I wanted to get back to Buddy. He just had his neuter surgery on Tuesday so he is still recuperating. Doin’ good though. He is getting so big…11 lbs. and 1/2 oz.