Got up, loaded out and said our goodbyes. PJ was heading north towards Hannibal up on the Mississippi River. I was heading somewhere rural. Who knows.

Be safe out there on that R.A.M.B.L,E., brother.

511. “PJ, ready to R.A.M.B.L,E.”
512. “Throttle.”
513. “I’ve been ev-ree-wherrrrre…”
514. “P.J.’s dad.”
515. “Prima bag.”
516. “Hoss.”

And that’s what happened. I just took off and started driving.

517. “Lost, in the woods.”
518. “A good lookin’ river, off the beaten path.”

Lost, somewhere in the middle, working away dilligently in quiet, wired hotel room somewhere.

- - - -

The sheer enormity of Sunday’s post just couldn’t fit this little chapter into it. Here’s our visit to a sunken steamboat in downtown Kansas City, right after our West Bottoms tour. We pick up right we left off a couple days back…

Then we headed over to the Arabia Steamboat, that sunk in the Missouri River back in 1852, got stuck in the river muck, and was swallowed up by river muck. River muck. Lots of it. Then the river, like life in general, shifted some and moved inland a bit. Then it moved back. So what you had was: This riverboat went down, got buried, the river shifted, and deep underneath a farmer’s cornfield, but a half mile from that shapeshifting river, laid a mud-protected steamboat, as it lived in the 1850s. Awesome.

Lore and legend was all that was left of the boat once civilization went looking for it. A local family did a little research, talk to some farmers and set out to find the remains. They started digging, drilling and doing core samples. In no time, they found the boat, and plotted out it’s buried location. They started digging right away, and got all the way down, some 40 feet to the soggy, muddy shifted riverbed.

The amazing part of this historic find was the wealth of treasures that were preserved as new as the day they were buried. This boat was on it’s way out west, so it was carrying just about everything to stock stores at the end of the line, deep in the frontier.

519. “Treasures of the Steamboat Arabia, no.01”
520. “Treasures of the Steamboat Arabia, no.02”
521. “Treasures of the Steamboat Arabia, no.03”
522. “Treasures of the Steamboat Arabia, no.04”
523. “Treasures of the Steamboat Arabia, no.05”
524. “Treasures of the Steamboat Arabia, no.06”
525. “Treasures of the Steamboat Arabia, no.07”
526. “Treasures of the Steamboat Arabia, no.08”
527. “Treasures of the Steamboat Arabia, no.09”
528. “Treasures of the Steamboat Arabia, no.10”
529. “Treasures of the Steamboat Arabia, no.11”