“Don’t be disappointed if we don’t see any eagles,” I warned my two young daughters as we drove round the last curve before we reached the river. A frigid January had tamed the top of the Mighty Mississippi. Only the churning water below the Clarksville lock and dam kept the ice from forming over a pond-sized pool.

That’s where we headed.

As it turned out, we weren’t the only visitors. The river came into view and, surrounding it, more white-headed sea eagles than any of us expected. You know them as American bald eagles. They were everywhere, in the sky, in the trees, on both riverbanks. Must’ve been a thousand, by my estimate.

Hitchcock never saw so many birds. They were flying and fishing and tumbling through the air, and doing all the things that large birds of prey like to do. We did what we like to do: We watched. We walked. We ate. Then we left for Hannibal, driving up Highway 79, along Missouri’s Great River Road.

–from Coastal Missouri

Read more travel stories at https://www.facebook.com/ARoadTripIntoAmericasHiddenHeart/