Henderson, Ky to Shawneetown, IL......

We decided to go for a drive yesterday. We drove over to Henderson to check on the fields that they are beginning to flood with water for the migrating water fowl that come through this area. One field that it looks like they will be flooding should provide me with some good photos later when the birds arrive....I hope. All we saw yesterday were a few Killdeer......
....and a line of "something" in the distance. Ducks? Maybe I won't have good photos after all unless I buy a scope of some sort.

This Kestrel was getting very irritated with us after we made him move about 3 times. Hey....he could have stayed in one spot and let me take a few photos and we would have all been happy!

This field is usually underwater....not this year. Maybe in another month or so, if we get more rain. I could see some Horned Larks out there, but had trouble getting focused on them. They blend in too well with the dirt.

We decided to head back home by way of Shawneetown, IL because the northbound bridge across the Ohio River at Henderson is having some sort of construction and the traffic was lined up for miles...non-moving...when we passed by heading into Henderson. So we got to view a bit of farm country as we headed southwest to Illinois.

Some horses in a field we passed.

The bridge at Shawneetown......heading upwards!

I was trying to shoot a barge on the river below as we went across the bridge. That dark area at the top of the photo isn't sky...it's a bridge railing.

There are actually 2 Shawneetown's.....Old Shawneetown on the river and New Shawneetown a few miles inland on higher ground. After Old Shawneetown was caught in the big 1937 Ohio River flood, the government encouraged them to move the town. A few stubborn people stayed and now the population of Old Shawneetown is only 278. There is a lovely river view still from the top of the levee.

I liked this cool piece of driftwood!

A tug under the bridge. You can see water level markings on the bridge....very low at this time.

The view up river.

This is an interesting monument to the "Spirit of Shawneetown".

At one time Shawneetown was the US government administration center for the Northwest Territories and was an important town. According to Wickipedia, Shawneetown and Washington DC have the distinction of being the only towns chartered by the US government. I'm not sure I know exactly what that means, but even linking the two seems strange when you see "sleepy" little Shawneetown! There were two really old banks there. One was the first bank in Illinois. This is the Bank of Illinois built in 1839-1841.

I liked the old rail fence along the building.
Somewhere in my reading I saw that the 1937 flood came up to the second story windows of the bank! That is a lot of water....no wonder the town moved to high ground. Evansville was under water in the 1937 flood, too. Anyone alive from back then remembers it well.

The sky in the windows of the bank building.

Shawneetown is also where young sweethearts would run away to get married in the tri-state area, because there was no waiting period. I do some work putting information in a genealogy web site and see many couples that started their marriage over in Shawneetown.

It was an interesting drive across parts of Kentucky and Illinois. We crossed the Wabash River at Mount Vernon, IN which is on the west side of Evansville. So we crossed two large rivers on our round about trip.