Day 10: Winona MN -> St Cloud MN

Checking my e-mail yesterday evening after checking into the Winona Super 8.  Apparently I cancelled my reservation at quarter to five that evening.  It is difficult to see how this could be the case since at that particular time I was still driving up US-14.  Hopefully, since They think I didn't stay there, I won't get charged for it.

Only about 200 miles to cover today so I thought I'd have a shufti at Lock & Dam #5 just up the road.

Dam and blast!

As luck would have it, a barge tow was approaching the lock, so time for a spot of gongoozling:

The locks on the river 600 feet long^[1] and 110 wide while the navigable channel is dredged to a depth of 9 feet.  The thing enters the lock at something less than a walking pace and ICBA to wait for the procedure to complete.

Another side effect of the lock'n'dam business is that the Upper Mississippi is effectively a chain of lakes, including this one:

Lake Pepin

at the imaginatively-named Lake City.  And what do you do if you have a lake like that?  In this case, you invent water skiing, or so the signs claim.

And don't forget to wash down your boat afterwards...

The Man is anxious to stop the spread of invasive species, y'see, particularly zebra mussels and Asian carp.

Next stop Minneapolis.  And no, I didn't know about the mass shooting there the other day.  I headed for St Anthony Falls, which is the head of navigation on the river since The Man closed the neighbouring lock to keep those pesky Asian carp out of the upper reaches of the river.  History, and bridges, abound, and mercifully it was somewhat cooler than it had been while faffing about at the lock.  It even made a half-hearted attempt at raining but lacked the stamina to make anything of it.

The falls, with Central Avenue bridge

I-35W bridge; replaced the one which collapsed into the river in 2007

The area was a centre for flour production

"Unmissable!" - Chris Waddle

While it would have been possible to spend a lot longer prowling the Minneapolis waterfront I decided to push off sharpish, because it's a holiday weekend.  Sadly half the population of Minneapolis also decided that it's POETS^[2] Day and traffic on I-94 was bad.  Traffic getting off I-94 was worse because of terrible synchronisation of traffic lights in Monticello.  Still, it;s not all doom and gloom because my room here not only occupies more real estate than Larrington Towers, it also overlooks the Somewhat-Less-Than-Mighty Mississippi:

1. A couple of them downstream have a double-length main lock in addition to the 600' one.
2. Piss Off Early Tomorrow's Saturday.  Obv.

Day 9: Clinton IA -> Winona MN

A more leisurely day in store today.  And it was only 25^o at 9 this morning.  Where's me jumper?  Last night's caravanserai had a lovely view of a truck stop and contained this:

which is approximately 115.846% more tacky than anything on show at Graceland.  In contrast, downtown Clinton has a cool linear park thing along the riverside levee:

I couldn't get far enough away to fit the whole
boat in the shot without falling in the river

Play "Free Bird"!

I stuck to the Iowa side of the river for the first few miles before heading through Sabula and back into Illinois.  Sabula had pelicans on its lake but there were too far from the shore to be decently visible chiz.

IL-84 veers away from the river through rolling countryside

and the town of Galena wich hav a v. interesting history ect etc.  Ulysses S. Grant lived here and it's got loadsa historic buildings:

Galena Post Office; I suspect the aircon unit is not a period feature...

and generally has "tourist trap" written all over it in large, friendly letters.  Nice bridge though:

I then got spat back across the river and into an impromptu tour of the armpit of Dubuque IA, due to the confusing signposting on the Illinois side.  Back on the east side and the Great River Road veers off onto smaller county roads, passing through small towns without so much as a traffic light.  And so into Wisconsin, where I ent been since 2009. Cassville has a cool ferry:

but at twenty of your Earth dollars I think not.  Eventually the route joins forces with WI-35, mostly sticking close to the river again.

Old Settler's Overlook, near Genoa WI

At La Crosse is was kthxbai Wisconsin and o hai Minnesota for the last 25 miles to Winona.  Today I are mostly learning that Winona Ryder was named after the town, having been born near here.  And I wish I'd kept a copy of Samfast's "Ode To Winona" dating from her 2002 conviction for shoplifting, but one verse went:

Winona, Winona

The judge had a bona

But couldn't condona

Your thieving persona

No wonder he emigrated to Captain Cook's Mistake. 

 

Day 8: Jackson MO -> Clinton IA

So today turned out to be a bit of a nothing day.  Mr Google done told me that up past St Louis they're building an Even Newer Chain Of Rocks Bridge to replace the New Chain Of Rocks Bridge, which in turn supplanted the Chain Of Rocks Bridge in 1970.  "Aha!" said Mr Larrington.  "By visiting the original and genuine Chain Of Rocks Bridge, which I last clapped eyes on in 2016, I can also see what's going on upriver with new! IMPROVED!!1! Bridgey Goodness".

Except that when I got there, rufty-tufty hairy-arsed artisans were also at work on the bridge over the canal wot bypasses the Chain Of Rocks itself, rendering the Chain Of Rocks Bridge inaccessible.

"Damn and blast!" exclaimed Mr Larrington.  "Still, the Confluence Tower is not far away and who knows?  Perhaps today there will be someone there to take my ten zlotys and permit access to the tower:

that I might view the, er, confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers."

There wasn't. OK.  The National Great Rivers Museum is only a few miles further, next door to the Melvin Price Locks and Dam.  Downstream of the Chain Of Rocks the Mississippi is free-flowing all the way to the Gulf of America Mexico but there's twenty-seven locks between there and Minneapolis, y'see.  Park the car, trudge halfway to the museum entrance before spotting a board reading "No bags allowed".  And another one reading "ID Required".  It's a museum, FFS, not a SEEKRIT Nuclear Bunker; the Nike Missile Site SL-90 is 25 miles up the road.  So bolshie great yarblockoes to the National Great Rivers Museum and all who sail in her.

I decided thereafter to follow the Great River Road signs northwards.  This was a Good Thing, at least at first, because IL-100 follows the river in exactly the same way that all previous parts of this year's anabasis didn't.  Very scenic.  Unfortunately it then wanders off parallel to the Illinois River.  Which I'm sure is a very nice river in its own right

See?

but forms part of the navigable link between the Mississippi and the Great Lakes and thus goes off in the wrong direction.  This in turn required negotiating two-hundred odd miles of the agricultural heart of western Illinois, which rivals western Cambridgeshire for dullness.  The last bit from the Quad Cities^[1] up to Clinton, after crossing the river into Iowa, were more like IL-100 and actually went in the right direction.

After juggling the map and calendar it seems I have more time to cover less distance that I had antic...

...

...pated so can take it a bit easier from here to the actual source of the river, and have an extra day to get halfway across the country to Battle Mountain to boot.  Hurrah!

Day 7: Memphis TN -> Jackson MO

So I opened the blind this morning - yesterday the afternoon sun was shining full on the window so it was closed on arrival - and found this:

BRIDGE!!1!

Moreover, whenever the lift in the hotel arrived at the ground floor it made a noise like a puppy having its tail trodden on.  This is all you need to know about the Best Western Plus Gen X Inn in Memphis, TN.

So what else is Memphis known for?  Well, it seems that a Mr E.A. Presley used to live here.  Some sort of front man for a Popular Beat Combo, I'm told.  His former residence is open to the vulgar gaze of the public so 'tis off we go to Graceland.

This, you understand, is not actually Graceland because that's on the opposite side of the main road.  No, this is the reset of the complex containing numerous halls devoted to all aspects of Elvis' life, also restaurants, gift shops and the parking lot, and to get to Chez Elvis you must board a shuttle bus and Lo!

It's nowhere near as big as I thought it might be and frankly nowhere near as kitsch either.  I mean, we Larringtons had one of these wine dispenser gadgets:

although ours was only the single-barrelled version.  This munkeh though:

Don't have nightmares, kids...

Ceci n'est pas une pipe

because it's apparently for smoking cigars through.  Weirdo.

Elvis has indeed left the building

Once you're done with the house it's back across the road for the ancillaries.  Cars:

Oh Lord, won't you buy me...

Motorcycles:

I think this Honda Dream is the same model as that ridden by Robert
Pirsig on the road trip in "Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance"

Tractors^[1]:

Aircraft:

Convair 880 "Lisa Marie"

And footbridges:

There's also a hall dedicated to people who have cited Elvis as an influence.  Kiss?  Joe Perry out off of Aerosmith?  Def Leppard's Joe Elliott?  A bunch of presumed country singers I've never heard of.  And Dolly:

Next to Dolly are The Judds and the only thing I know about The Judds is that they figure prominently in the Puscifer song Cuntry Boner.  Yes, it was co-written by RATM's Tom Morello.  No, you can look the lyrics up yourself.  Graceland: worth a visit?  Yes.  Value for money?  No.  The Delta Blues Museum wins that one hands-down.  Clicky here for MOAR Graceland photos.

Gracelanded-out by lunchtime, I instructed Emily to take me to the bridge where the rivers collide.  According to one Andrew "Pokey LaFarge" Heissler anyway.  This required about three hours northbound up I-55, where the continued high temperatures and heavy truck traffic provided good hunting for the Goodyear's southern buzzard, a large raptor that lives off the carcasses of exploded lorry tyres^[2].  The rivers in question are the Ohio and the Mississippi, and they collide just south of Cairo IL.  Where, it must be said, the Ohio carries considerably more water than the Mississippi.  Thus according to the geographers the Ohio ought to be considered the main stem.  With that and the most distant source being the headwaters of the Missouri on the Montana/Idaho border, the actual Mississippi starts to look like a bit of a fraud.  Also, there isn't a bridge where the rivers collide:

To the left, the Ohio; to the right the Mississippi

There are bridges over both rivers not far upstream but...  The song in question is called Cairo Illinois, Cairo being the nearest thing to a ghost town I've ever seen without actually being one.  I've seen livelier cemeteries.  So it's not inconceivable that if you did fetch up in Cairo on a Saturday night jumping in the river might be the closest thing to entertainment on offer.  The far bank of the Ohio is Kentucky, so I popped over there to notch up five states in a day before returning to Missouri and heading north again.

1. Just the one tractor, actually
2. May contain traces of Lie

Day 6: Clarksdale MS -> Memphis TN

Firstly, what kind of quality control do they exert at Plastic-Cutlery-Я-Us LLC that they allow a fork out into the wild with mutant tines that make spearing a sausage a hit-and-miss affair?  I shall write to my MP as soon as I return to London's Famous London…

And so to here:

which is housed in an old railway depot, part-owes its existence to Billy Gibbons out off of ZZ Top and is well worth fifteen of your Earth dollars.  If you like your blues from Chicago, or Texas, or California, or Eel Pie Island this is not the place for you.  This is the Delta and they brook no substitute.  With the advent of mechanised farming in the Delta many locals upped sticks and moved to the industrial cities of the north and natch the musicians followed, most notably to Chicago where Muddy Waters subsequently invented electricity^[1], but this is where it all started.  Sadly they don't permit photography inside so you'll have to take my word for it, but when, Constant Reader, have I ever lied to you?

Nice lady Mary-Jane at the museum asked me whether I was a musician, a misapprehension possibly brought about by long hair, band^[2] T-shaped shirt and bass-player-inna-stoner-rock-band sunglasses.  I allowed as how I wasn't, whereupon she gave me a free plectrum:

I shall stick it on the kitchen wall next to the one Alonso
out off of Flor De Loto gave me last week…

and opined that this might encourage me to buy a guitar.  I think it will take a little more than that so I drove down the road a bit, to here:

I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees…

but the Devil utterly failed to turn up like he allegedly did for Robert Johnson, Tommy "No Relation" Johnson and Peetie Wheatstraw, there to take possession of their souls in return for mastery of the blues.  The bastard. So I revisited Highway 61 yet again.

Highway 61 goes straight to Memphis from Clarksdale but it was only 11:30 and check-in time here wasn't until 15:00.  Plus while I hadn't

Stayed in Mississippi a day too long^[3]

it was time to try a new state and I didn't want Arkansas to feel left out so I took US-49 back across the river to Helena, where they have a nice park by the river, containing this:

Use your Junior Pocket Microscope (model 3a) to spot
Rocky Raccoon to the right of the tree

To kill more time I went north through the Arkansas Delta which is very much like the Mississippi version but contains evidence of actual cultivation of cotton.  And so to I-40 and back across the river to Tennessee.

I-40 bridge, Memphis

Still no getting away from those bluesmen though:

B.B. King mural, Tennessee Welcome Center, Memphis

1. On the other hand, Lou Reed claimed that electricity comes from other planets, but I don't think that's true either.
2. The Zac Schulze Gang.  It seemed appropriate.
3. His Bobness, Mississippi, from "Love And Theft", 2001.

Day 5: Natchez MS -> Clarksdale MS

 Back on the road again, though the first port of call was only a couple of miles down the road; the Forks Of The Road:

At one time the Forks of the Road was the second-largest slave market in the United States, trailing only New Orleans - Wikinaccurate

Natch this ended pretty sharpish when the place surrendered to the Union.

After having a mosey around the site it was Highway 61 Revisited, northbound to Vicksburg.  As you've probably guessed, Vicksburg have a v. interesting history ect etc.  Being situated on a bluff a hundred-odd metres above the Mississippi and thus sometimes compared with Gibraltar, it was kind of important, but fell to the Union after a 47-day siege in 1863.  The site is now maintained by the very splendid and worthwhile National Park Service, with a circular tour road which takes in far more detail than anyone except the buffest of Civil War buffs could ever absorb at one sitting.

Cannons (various)

Obelisk commemorating the US Navy's role in the proceedings

USS Cairo^[1]

The Cairo was sunk without loss of life by a mine in the Yazoo River in 1862 and was subsequently raised in 1964.  And clearly gave Space Karen the inspiration for the "styling" of the Tesla Cybertruck.

This was the only sighting of the Mississippi today:

if indeed it is the Mississippi and not the Yazoo or some other upstart waterway.

Back onto Highway 61 for a while before the official Great River Road has you take Mississippi Highway 1 through the Delta^[2].  Why this chunk of alluvial plain between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers is so named is a hard one to fathom. It's pan-flat, mostly agricultural and, in these days of mechanised farming, pretty empty.  But Thee Playlist ov Doom rose to the occasion by playing Please Read The Letter from the Jimmy Page/Robert Plant album "Walking Into Clarksdale".  Tomorrow: MOAR culture...

1. Usually pronounced "Kay-ro" coz it's named for the place where the Ohio River flows into the Mississippi, not that one in Egypt.
2. The region where the Mississippi hits the Gulf of America Mexico is generally referred to as the "Mississippi River Delta" and plays little part in the history of the blues.

Day 4: Natchez MS

Today is a non-travelling day.  Hurrah!  Originally the first destination was to be the Old River Control Structure (see below) but while looking for it on the map I noticed this:

was only a couple of miles further on.  There's apparently 200-odd of these markers dotted around the south - mostly in Mississippi but some not. Shortly afterwards Thee Playlist ov Doom fired Honeydripper by Mr Guy and frequent harmonica-bothering collaborator Junior Wells at me.  Yay!

The Mississippi has historically been wont to change its course, leaving odd bits of some states on the opposite side of the river from the majority, because the state line runs down the centre of the river where it was in 18-mumble, not where it is now.  And if left to its own devices, it would likely forsake its current course and turn sharp right down the Old and Atchafalaya Rivers, because that's the shortest route to the sea.  A good deal of time, effort, and money has gone into the creation of the ports of Baton Rouge, South Louisiana and New Orleans so having the main flow of the river go somewhere else would definitely not enhance shareholder value.  Hence the US Army Corps of Engineers built the Old River Control Structure to keep the Mississippi on track and only letting a small proportion of its water take the scenic route.  Plus when the main river floods - which it is somewhat prone to doing - the excess can be diverted.

Lock allows boat traffic to pass between the Old River and the Mississippi

Main sluices

All the above is own the Louisiana side of the river; Natchez is connected to Vidalia LA by this rather fine pair of bridges:

In the shade at the Vidalia end

From the bluffs in Natchez

Time for a saunter around bits of Natchez.  The place was originally founded by the French, got rich on cotton^[1] and quickly surrendered to the Union during the Civil War, thus avoiding being blown to bits and leaving an extraordinary number of intact antebellum houses, such as this imposing pile:

Rosalie, used for a while as Ulysses S. Grant's HQ

Also intact is the area on the river bank itself:

Formerly a wretched hive of scum and villainy, now a wretched hive of bars, restaurants, B&B's and gift shops.

The place is also the setting of a Several of thrillers by lawyer-turned-novelist Greg Iles, mostly featuring lawyer-turned-novelist Penn Cage righting wrongs and overcoming a selection of deeply unpleasant baddies.  Mr Cage lived here:

Swiss-stylee architecture, it sez 'ere

In reality it's an AirBnB and is up for sale.  Roughly 1.75 million of your Earth dollars.  This vvvv:

The Turning Angel

also features in some, or more, of Mr Iles' books.  It supposedly appears to turn if you drive past it at night but I was unable to test this theory because I was there at lunchtime.

Last port of call before collapsing in a heap was "The Grand Village of the Natchez Indians".  Unlike for e.g. that place in North Dakota I visited three years ago there's not a lot to see save two and a half mounds, of which this is the most impressive:

Mound, Natchez, Saturday

Unsurprisingly, the French settlers behaved like utter bastards to the locals who ultimately had enough and killed a couple of hundred settlers utterly to DETH. This did not, in the long term, help very much as Wikinaccurate can tell you.

1. Before the Civil War Natchez reportedly contained more millionaires than any other town in USAnia save New York