At the Lead Mine and Farmington and St. Genevieve

Ann Marie was kind enough to take a Friday off and she and I with Sandy took a trip down to a Missouri State Park that is an abandoned lead mine.

There is good and bad to this.   The buildings are nice and rusty and photogenic,  the light was pretty good,  but you can't get into the buildings. 

There is a museum there that I went through.   They have some of the old mining equipment and a room of crystals and then a room of old power generation parts.

In the old days each mine would have it's own power plant.   One company bought up most of the mines in the area and got the local commercial power company to build a dam  and supply power to all their mines. The dam created the lake of the Ozarks,  if I understood the story correctly.

We went into Farmington for lunch and found a bar/grill.   I had the spicy shrimp po boy with fried green tomatoes.   Pretty good,  but the tomatoes  didn't have a lot of flavor.

Then on to St.  Genevieve,  which is about 2 miles inland from the Mississippi River with Illinois being across the river.   We went down to the ferry doc and tried to ride the ferry over and back.   Alas,  the coast Guard had suggested that they needed some repairs before returning to commercial service.  

We went back into town and wandered about.   There are homes that date from the Colonial period and some from the early 19th century.   Ann Marie and I went through the house from 1830.  He was a trader and there were a lot of pelts on display.   From muskrat to bear with buffalo in between.  

The docent was pretty good and had some history to relate.   We didn't want to hang around for some of the other houses.   It is an interesting town and worth a look.   (For those of you who worry about the unprecedented rise of sea level,  they have flood gates and a levee system there.   They also had markings from prior floods that were 20 feet or so above our heads.   Lots of water on occasion,  then and probably down the road.)

Then we headed back to SL and it was time to put the feet up and Crack one of Kaz's beers (don't anyone tell him!)   We dined on Culver's butter  hamburgers for dinner.   I've yet to try the frozen custard out here,  it comes recommended.

The interstates are all jammed up as we came back into town.   We missed all of that.   Dropped Sandy off and called it a day.

Rain tomorrow in the afternoon.   We have somethings planned.   Sunday is a travel day and they are predicting a lot of rain and possible flooding.

We may have to hang around Busch Park and drink the free beer.

Rich