Happy Mother's Day to all! Doreen received a call or Facetime from all three kids and social media notes from her Maine boys and children's friends who called her "Mom". We had a nice day exploring the area around Scott Air Force Base. We started by driving about 30 minutes to Cahokia Mounds which is the largest prehistoric Indian site north of Mexico. It seems strange as it is hidden just northeast of St Louis! The Cahokia Mounds covered about 4000 acres and included 120 mounds. The State of Illinois now protects 2200 acres of the central portion of the site and 72 of the 80 remaining mounds. The first settlements date back to 700 AD. They continued to grow and peaked from 1050-1200 AD sprawling over six square miles with a population of 10,000-20,000 people and included farmsteads, villages, satellite towns.
Cahokia was organized around Monks Mound, the 40-acre grand plaza and several smaller plazas where ceremonies and public gatherings. Around these were clusters of mounds and organized neighborhoods or single family dwellings. So, the mounds were made from earth dug from "borrow pits" with stone and wooden tools, transported in baskets on people's backs. Looking up at the massive Monks Mound it is hard to imagine all this dirt being moved by hand!! Monks Mound is the largest prehistoric earthen construction in the Americas, containing more than 22 million cubic feet of earth. Many buildings existed back in the day but they are of course all gone now.
There are 156 steps on the way up to the top of Monk's Mound and we touched every one of them,,, twice, once on the way up, and once on the way down! The view from the top was amazing.
The mounds even extend into the nearby neighborhood. There were stockades, bastions, and graves. One of the mounds revealed over 300 ceremonial burials, mostly young women in mass graves, apparently sacrificed. Further excavations have unearthed five circular sun calendars, called Woodhenges, They were used to determine the changing seasons and ceremonial dates.
Many factors led to the demise of the Cahokia, including depletion of resources, disease and climate change. Where the Cahokians went remains a mystery.
Unfortunately the Interpretive Center was closed, but it was still an interesting stop.
Departing the Cahokia Mounds we headed into nearby Collinsville to visit the Brooks Catsup Bottle Water Tower. This is supposed to be "World Largest Catsup Bottle!!
The World's Largest Catsup Bottle stands proudly next to Route 159, just south of downtown Collinsville, Illinois. This unique 170 ft. tall water tower was built in 1949 by the W.E. Caldwell Company for the G.S. Suppiger catsup bottling plant - bottlers of Brooks old original rich & tangy catsup. In 1995, due to the efforts of the Catsup Bottle Preservation Group, this landmark roadside attraction was saved from demolition and beautifully restored to its original appearance.
We could not frame up a nice selfie with this beauty in the background, but needless to say, we are glad we stopped!!
From here we drove southeast towards Scott Air Force Base and a small town called Mascoutah IL. I had found a winery called Jo-Al Winery and they seemed very fitting for a nice Mother's Day excursion with Doreen. Enroute we tried calling to see if they were open on Mother's day and it rang with a strange tone. When we rolled in the driveway, the note on the door explained it all. They were closed, for good. The couple that owned it apparently retired! Good for them, bad for us.
Oh well, "improvise, adapt and overcome", right? I proposed we stop into the local liquor store and pick up a bottle of Boones Farm, but Doreen was not feeling it, so we headed west to a nearby Mexican restaurant.
We had a nice Mother's Day meal at Los Amigo's Mexican Restaurant in Belleville IL complete with a frozen peach margarita for Doreen!
Tomorrow is our last day here. We are having lunch with our friends and then will fuel the truck, get any last minutes provisions and make preparations to head NE Tuesday morning to Terre Haute IN.
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