Last weekend was in Joplin, MO, and I took several photos of the tornado devastation while I was down there. It occurred to me that I could use Google Maps Street View to see versions of these photos before the tornado, so I have created the following set of paired photos to share.
I’ve matched the photos as closely as possible, though it was not always possible to match the same angle in Street View that some of my photos had. Furthermore, Street View uses a wider angle lens while I was shooting with zoom, so in some of my photos the background may seem closer/larger than the Google versions. Please keep these facts in mind while browsing these photos.
The devastation is unimaginable, and photos don’t even come close to conveying the scale of it. There are spots on 20th Street where you can look in every direction and see nothing but destruction all the way to the horizon. And, as you will see in some of these photos, the horizon has been greatly extended in some areas.
There’s already amazing signs of recovery. Temporary utility poles and lines have been installed. Temporary traffic lights and traffic signs, too. There’s even temporary cell towers in place. And, some buildings are already under construction.
If you decide to visit for yourself, please remember that people are mourning and trying to get their lives back together. Many areas are still dangerous, and many others are restricted. Stick to the main roads only — do not attempt to enter any residential neighborhoods. Don’t dawdle or block traffic. Don’t get in anyone’s way, and don’t touch anything that doesn’t belong to you.
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For most of my life I had a vague memory fluttering in my head. A witch, serving pancakes in a breakfast restaurant, that when you eat them make you happy. The spell was shown by ...
Yesterday (Sunday, April 15) I set out to walk from Liberty, MO to Olathe, KS. I started out at the courthouse in Liberty Square. I wanted to end at the courthouse in downtown Olathe ...
NEW: Check out my new bar blog, ScootersBars.com
For the past few years I've been keeping a meticulous record of ever bar I have visited. While I have been listing them by name here, several people have mentioned ...
This past Friday afternoon Seth joined me for another walking barhopping trip, this one through the Greater Downtown Area.
Apart from being able to say that we walked 6.5 miles and had 16 drinks at 14 bars (plus one extra drink/bar ...
What Ken's Up To What Seth's Up To On Melissa's Mind
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Waking up the next morning in Quincy we were finally able to see the Mississippi River view from our motel room, albeit shrouded in fog.
We also got to see for the first time what Quincy looks like in daylight…
Crossing the Mississippi River into Missouri…
An old Drive-In near Hannibal. We didn’t get to actually go in to Hannibal, as we needed to try to be home by early afternoon. That’s okay, we’ll be back here soon enough. We only managed to experience 20% at best of the dive …
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Monday, November 15, 2010
Quincy, Illinois. A town with a German heritage on the banks of the Mississippi River. Population: around 40-45 thousand. Bar population: Somewhere between 50 and 75 depending on who you ask. (I estimate the number to be between 55 and 60 based on liquor license filings.) In larger areas of this town you can’t go more than 2-3 blocks in any residential neighborhood without finding a corner bar. Most are dives.
We are home.
#837: North End Tavern
1130 North 24th Street
Quincy, IL 62301
(217) 222-8103
[map]
Finally, some 11 hours …
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Monday, November 15, 2010
Another early start. Today would be the last barhopping day of the trip, and we knew it would also be the biggest. Thankfully here in Terre Haute we had found another decent yet inexpensive place to stay, so we were well rested for what lay ahead.
While B checked us out of the motel,I watched these guys spend several minutes — and a few failed efforts — trying to figure out how to load this into the truck…
Once checked out we hit the road. Within moments we were …
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Sunday, November 14, 2010
Now that we were in Indiana and only needed to get as far as Terre Haute we could start slowing things down. Sort of. We elected to make only one stop in Evansville, but then stop in every town after that with a bar.
#809: Deerhead Tavern
222 East Columbia Street
Evansville, IN 47711
(812) 425-2515
[map] [web]
A pizza pub, jazz tavern, and sidewalk cafe all rolled up into one.
This is a new one for me — the beer was served in malt glasses…
This was a good pizza. A cracker thin …
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Sunday, November 14, 2010
We checked out of our Manchester, TN motel, a very nice one just a few hundred yards from the previous night’s last bar, and got on the road. We had realized we were about an hour’s drive further south than we had realized the night before, so we had a lot of driving to do.
As we approached Nashville again, we decided to make a quick stop for souvenirs. Assuming we could find any, anyway, as it was about 10am on a Sunday morning.
We were surprised to find …
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Saturday, November 13, 2010
As we headed north out of Atlanta we decided to stop and find 1 bar in Marietta. But we decided this one exit too late so we had to settle for Kennesaw instead…
#797: Bullfrogz
3655 Cherokee St NW
Kennesaw, GA 30144
(678) 331-8470
[map] [web]
We had intended to look for a bar in Marietta, but we wound up in Kennesaw by mistake. We asked the GPS to find us the closest bar and this is where she brought us.
This is a big tiki themed place with a U-shaped bar …
Saturday, November 13, 2010
We woke up extra early and headed back over to Grandma’s house, for a breakfast of her famous sausage rolls. I’d had them a few times before, but never in their pure form, directly from The Source.
After breakfast we said our goodbyes, then hit the road. Our first destination of the day: Atlanta.
But we weren’t here to drink, we were here to do some early-morning shopping at IKEA.
I had never been in an IKEA before and never understood why so many people want to shop at one. …
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Friday, November 12, 2010
On Friday morning we woke up early for what we knew would be a long day. We had mis-estimated the distance from Clarksville to Macon and found we had about 2 more hours of driving ahead of us than we planned, and we knew there would be a lot of traffic and a lot of work for us to do once we reached Macon.
The first thing we notice was that the air was hazy and smelled of smoke. It was like this much of the way from …
