The GRR neatly skips around Chester, “Home of Popeye,” via a pleasant riverbank detour, returning to Hwy-3 on the downstream side of town. Popeye first appeared in print in 1929, and a memorial to local boy Elzie Segar, creator of the spinach-guzzling scrapper, stands in a picnic area beside the bridge to Missouri; if you miss it, you’ll have to turn around on the other side of the Mississippi. Chester locals Frank “Rocky” Fiegel and William “Windy Bill” Schuchert were the inspiration for Popeye the Sailor and Wimpy the Hamburger Fiend. If you pass through on the second weekend of September, drop by Popeye’s birthday party, with its big flea market of all the Popeye collectibles you never imagined existed.
South of Chester, the GRR passes by a couple of old barns painted with fading signs advertising “Meramec Caverns—US-60—Stanton MO” (see page 831).
