The Confluence

                My dad delights in annoying me- that friendly pestering that as a child made me squeal, and as an adult generally either embarrasses me or makes me laugh.  This, of course, is his prerogative as Dad.  Yesterday, we got each other with the word “confluence.”

                It began with a stop at the Lewis and Clark State Memorial Park which is located in Illinois on the Mississippi River.  It is located near where Lewis and Clark camped before crossing the Mississippi River and continuing up the Missouri River on their exploration of the west.  Mom asked where the Missouri River joined the Mississippi River and I told her that I thought that the confluence was a bit north of where we were.  Dad had to make fun of me for pulling out a polysyllabic vocabulary word.

                After taking some pictures and discussing the merits of fishing the river for catfish, we continued on to an observation tower that I had found a few weeks ago.  As we pulled in, we discovered, much to our amusement, that it is named the Lewis and Clark Confluence Tower. 

                The Confluence Tower is a relatively new monument to the intrepid explorers.  The view from the top of the tower sweeps from Alton, IL in the north to Saint Louis in the south.  However, the real highlight of the view is the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.  From the tower, you can easily see the Missouri flowing into the Mississippi from a unique perspective.

                After we came down from the tower, Mom wanted to take a picture of me with this great fountain in the monument’s courtyard.  It is one of those fountains where the spout is flush with the ground, and the courtyard and fountain form a continuous plane.  From when I first saw it, I had visions of kids running through it in the summer burning off energy built up during a road trip while cooling off.  Mom’s idea of taking a picture of me included me standing a few feet from it and smiling, but I had a different plan.  After giving her instructions to click the shutter as soon as I entered the frame “because I’m only doing this once”, I took the plunge, quite literally. 

                To say I got soaked would be completely accurate.  Mom thinks that I would have won the wet t-shirt contest if there was one and the look of absolute disbelief on Dad’s face was worth having to wear damp jeans for the rest of the day.  Thankfully, I had a fleece jacket in the car, so I changed into a dry top, and we continued on our merry way.

Note: A special thank you to Mom for this week’s pictures.

Lewis and Clark State Memorial Park: http://www.stateforests.com/lewis_and_clark_state_memorial_park_in_illinois.html

Lewis and Clark Confluence Tower: http://www.confluencetower.com/index.cfm