Driving in Spoon River country

Recently I had an opportunity to drive down along the Spoon River valley with Lil' Nick, Tom Anderson and Kimberly Watley.  We had been aiming for Camp Ellis, a former camp left over from WW 2 where they housed German prisoners of war. Along the way however we came across a few interesting sights.

 Our first stop was in West Jersey, where we took a few minutes to wander thru the church cemetery and snap a few photo's of the interesting markers we found there.  Kimberly even made friends with a fella named Boomer who had to 'photo bomb' a picture or two.  It was a quiet, peaceful spot and we made the most of the time there but eventually we had to press on, there was still yet more places to see.

Next on our list was the tiny village of Bernadotte.  We ate at the Bernadotte cafe and had a Great meal there! If you're ever in the area I highly recommend it. After lunch we took photo's of the nearby Old Mill site and the dam that still exists that once powered the mill wheel. Also next to the cafe, which had about four or five dozen Hummingbirds flitting about the windows, there was an old reminder of a time when we all didn't have a cell phone on our pockets.

From Bernadotte, we drove up to Camp Ellis and snapped quite a few photo's of the ruins and a couple buildings that had been repurposed. You'll see those photo's in a later post. But after leaving Camp Ellis we passed back thru Bernadotte and took the old road heading for Lewistown. Along the way we spied a marker for Tuscumbia, a ghost town that was founded  in 1837 and flourished for a few years but was eventually abandoned in 1855.

The afternoon was wearing on so we ended our day in Lewistown. There we found a depot for the now defunct Fulton county narrow gauge railroad which ran from Galesburg to Lewistown with stops in London Mills, Cuba, Havana, Sep, and others. It had 61 miles of track and ran from 1880 until 1905.  Today the depot serves as a museum to it's railroading past with a former caboose next to it that is open for tours on days the museum is open.

There are So Many rich treasures around our state if you just know where to look for them, so get out on some weekend day, fill the tank on the car and go Exploring. You won't be sorry you did.