For a scenic dozen miles south of Nauvoo, the GRR returns after long absence to the banks of the Mississippi, shaded by native hickory and oak, and then sidesteps yet another opportunity to enter Iowa, this time via US-136 west to Keokuk. Staying on the east bank, we follow a series of farm roads past gravel pits and fields for most of the 40-mile run down to Quincy.
First stop south of Nauvoo is what used to be the town of Warsaw. Patrons of the bars along the main drag probably think it still is Warsaw, but blocks of empty windows and shuttered doorways tell a different story. At the end of town the GRR threatens to turn amphibious as it rolls down past a towering grain elevator to the Mississippi’s edge, bends south along the base of the bluffs past old house trailers, scruffy fields full of wildlife—including wild turkeys and river turtles waddling along the roadside—and old kilns visible in the limestone, and passes, finally, into cornfields planted in the fertile floodplain of the river.
