Mississippi Watershed 3

Name that river where the hunters are putting in their boat on a ramp that’s showing some roughness?  If the guy taking fotos turns around, you’ll see

this arch by Saarinen.  So it’s a low water Mississippi, making the levees seem even higher than the posted 38′ to the street.  By the way, I hadn’t expected to be so impressed as I was by the arch and the underground museum.

This January along this part of the Mississippi had below freezing temperatures, not the weather to run show boats by these delightful names.  To ride either Becky Thatcher or Tom Sawyer, we’ll have to return in summer.  A few days ago in New Orleans, it was 77.

And that’s fine.  Summer would be a better time to go slowly through the Illinois River Valley, and enjoy sights like the 170′ pushboat America.   A few miles upriver–we didn’t get there–is also the former showboat Goldenrod, which I need to return to the area to see.

I hope to have more pics of America soon.

Another ferry–Golden Eagle Ferry–rests on the bank not far from to the south.  Click here for more ferries of the Middle Mississippi River valley.

Right in the middle of Kampsville is the “108 bridge,”  sort of like the US Route 10 Bridge between Michigan and Wisconsin.  But I digress.

Actually this is Miss Illinois, a 1998 Chattanooga-built tug connected by rotating kingpin to a barge ferry

The barge stays pointed the same direction all the time, but Miss Illinois pivots on the pin each time it shuttles to the other bank.

And the water is icy!

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.