Wanderung 3

Rocky Mountain Ramble

May - July 2003

May 25th - Jefferson City, Missouri

We planned to walk in Jefferson City in the morning and swing by the air show at Columbia airport on the way back. We were disappointed when we arrived at the Break Time convenience store in Jefferson City—the clerk said the current owner had removed the box and she had no idea where it was. But a quick call to the Point Of Contact helped out; he wasn’t home but had left a message on the answering machine that the new starting point was the Hotel DeVille on Route 50 just south of the capitol building. We drove into town on Route 50 and found the hotel a couple blocks south of the capital and just off the right side of the street. They did indeed have the start/finish box so we signed in, took a set of directions, and started out.

The Volksmarch YRE in Jefferson City was a very long loop with some bumps on it, rather like a shoelace tied in a bow knot. From the hotel we walked northwards up a rather steep hill toward the capitol building. After an initial tantalizing glimpse of it we turned off to the west for quite a spell. The stretch westward ended in a nice park where we made a loop and started back east.

On the way back we made another loop over north toward the Missouri River. The route followed the bluff on top of the river and gave some magnificent views upstream. It looked shallow but later in the walk I read a plaque at the old restored Opera House that said the owner regularly ran a steamboat from St. Louis to Helena, Montana in the 1880s! Helena is way, way upstream and getting a steamboat up that far must have been quite a trick when the river was shifting every year in its streambed.


 

The end of the big loop was the state capitol building. We circled it, which gave us a good look from all sides. It was a very nice capitol building with the traditional dome in the center and two wings, but since the route circled it we did not get to see the interior. An ensemble of a fountain, statue, and plaque on the north side on the Missouri River bluff commemorated the signing of the Louisiana Purchase (I think!).

After that we passed what I thought was a playful fountain with three sets of intersecting streams and one big stream arching over them. I remember thinking in my simple and unsophisticated way, ‘Oh how cute!’ I was quite chagrined when I read the explanation of the symbolism in the park at a nearby plaque: the entire area was a war memorial and the fountain symbolized the conflict of warfare overcome by the grand arch of peace! Oh well.

We enjoyed the Jefferson City walk but it did take us over two and a half hours, which was unusually slow. Either we’re getting old (possible) or the walk’s difficulty level is more like a 2 than a 1+. Basically there are several low hills along the route—nothing too strenuous, just noticeable effort. The pavillion in the park around the midpoint of the walk has nice rest rooms, as does the Hotel DeVille. I’m not certain if the hotel is named for a model of Cadillac automobile or whether Cruella has branched out from her attempts at making Dalmatian coats.

After lunch we drove back and did manage to find the air show despite a complete lack of any signs or directions for it (which I found quite puzzling). We saw the Army Golden Knights parachute team perform free-fall maneuvers and precision spot landings that were quite amazing. The helicopter folks treated us to a demonstration of how a Blackhawk helicopter could pick up a Humvee in a sling and transport it. I didn’t know that chopper had that kind of lifting capacity. Not to be outdone, the Air Force had fly-byes of an F-16 and an A-10.

All these displays of aerial prowess where impressive, but for me the best part of the air show was touring the flight line. The current generation of aircraft and helicopters were there, of course, but much more interesting was the displays of WWI and WWII aircraft. It was quite a selection. I recall seeing a Mitchell bomber, a P-38 Lightening, a Hellcat (or Bearcat—I have trouble telling them apart), and a Spitfire in the WWII section. The P-38 was the one they recovered from the Greenland ice cap and have now completely restored—it looked flyable to me.

The high point of my tour of the WWII flight line was seeing the P-51 Mustangs, a beautifully graceful and deadly effective aircraft that allowed unrestricted strategic bombing and helped bring WWII to a close in Europe. One of the Mustangs had a red tail; it turned out to be a restoration of one of the Mustangs flown by the Tuskegee Airmen group of black aviators. Then an old black gentlemen with the Tuskegee unit’s jacket walked up, and it turned out he was one of the original aviators! I had finally met a personal piece of history and how I wish I could have sat down and talked with him about what it was all like back then.

As it was, we talked about how the P-51 flew—I asked if it was “tricky” and he said no, it really flew quite well. He also dispelled the myth that you couldn’t use full throttle on take-off. He said the steerable tail wheel locked into position and that if you had it locked correctly it would keep you straight until you had enough speed for the rudder to have enough effectiveness to overcome the p-force.

He also opined that the P-51 was the fastest piston-powered aircraft in the European theatre, except maybe the British Mosquito bomber. He described how, “We were flying cover for a Mosquito on a photo reconnaissance mission and met a Messerschmidt 262 (a jet-powered fighter far faster than any piston aircraft). We all dove for a cloud layer below us at full throttle and that Mosquito just pulled away from us and disappeared into the clouds. We later found him below the clouds, of course, but he did pull away from us so I think he was faster.” Well, the aircraft started to depart for the day and we, too, had to be on our way back to camp.

Copyright 2004 by Robert W. Holt and Elsbeth Monika Holt
Prolog Map Epilog

May 2003
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June 2003
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July 2003
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