Balloting And Bridges

Back in April I received requests for absentee ballots for the April, August, and November elections from the county. I mailed them all in, and actually voted that way in April.

Then the state put an end to that. Missouri law only has six allowable reasons for absentee voting. The one I took advantage of last time, "Incapacity or confinement due to illness or physical disability, including caring for a person who is incapacitated or confined due to illness or disability" was loosely interpreted by the county to include people 60 years or older. The law actually says 65, so I was out of luck.

However, last month the governor signed a bill into law to establish a temporary vote-by-mail system for the next two elections. I received my ballot in the mail a couple of weeks ago, with instructions that it had to be notarized unless I was in one of the at-risk categories. Fortunately the Missouri Secretary of State's website had a list of people who were volunteering to notarize ballots. This morning Hubby Tony pulled up the list and found a location that was open today. He is still working on resetting his car's computer, so the library branch he chose would allow him to do some driving. It was a half hour away, close to the university Tony attended.

At the library there was no line for the notary, and we were in and out in fifteen minutes. Instead of driving straight home Tony meandered around the area, reminiscing about different places. All of a sudden we were at Interstate 270, and needed to decide if we were going to head home or in the opposite direction.  Tony asked if I was interested in checking out the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, which once carried Route 66 over the Mississippi River from Illinois. I was. It was time for an adventure.

Thanks to Google Maps we easily found the parking area for the bridge. We walked across the bridge over to the Missouri side (approximately a mile). At the end of the bridge there was a trailhead for a riverfront trail that went all the way downtown, but we just turned around and came back.

Observation bump out on the bridge

Instead of backtracking to go home, Tony took an Illinois state highway south until we saw the first downtown bridge over the Mississippi. We crossed back over into Missouri, and meandered our way to the condo. We made a slight detour to drop our ballots at the post office, so we could call the project completely finished.

Five years ago today: And Off Goes The Polish!