We Say Goodbye to the Upper Mississippi - The Party's Over (for now)

 On Thursday, October 21, evening we all put our luggage outside our cabin doors to be picked up and moved to the buses.  After a very early breakfast we vacated our rooms and disembarked.  Our bus carried us from Red Wing to the Minneapolis Airport.  We were told that the reason we did not continue sailing upstream to St. Paul was because the river depth was too shallow due to lack of rain.

Bob Grunst picked us up at the airport and gave us a quick tour of the city nearby.  Bob is a friend of Bill's from their old college days and a retired college professor who now lives in St. Paul with his wife, Sue.  We wanted to see the largest shopping mall in North America so here it is above.  It was still quite early so we did not go in to do any shopping, but instead headed for Frederic after dropping Bob at home.

It has been a fun trip with great weather and we will miss our cozy cabins on the water- each with its own balcony.  As well as.......

Happy hour each evening at 5:30 with live music and...

... a table of hors d'oeuvres  (Francis loved the shrimp) ...........and..

....... a great stocked bar and trained bar tenders with any top-shelf liquor or drink a person might want.

(all included in the price)

Just like currently in Michigan, we saw signs like this above in all the cities in which we stopped.

One mystery that was never solved for us was how the Red Wing Shoe logo, above,  turned out to be so similar to the logo of our beloved hockey team in Detroit????? (Go Wings!)

We had a very fun and educational trip with our neighbor and friend, Francis, on American Cruise Lines, and would recommend American to anyone who would like to try a smaller boat in which to cruise.

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Red Wing, MN - Another Neat River City with Lots of Sights

Per usual, we started out with a sound breakfast in the dining room to keep up our strength for another day of interesting speakers and places to visit.  Here is fellow passenger, Francis.

Next we saw a slide presentation of Mississippi steam boat history, and heard a few river songs by Bobby Durham who is our resident river expert.

Then we got another lecture by Mr. Samuel Clements, above, about slavery while he was growing up in Hannibal.

Mark Twain is portrayed by Richard Garey on our boat and he is outstanding, truly wonderful to watch and hear.  He answers questions as Mark Twain and should not be missed if you ever get a chance to see him in person!

Before lunch we walked a few blocks into downtown Red Wing and saw the old headquarters of Red Wing Shoes: above.

We walked across the street and entered the Red Wing Shoe Museum.  Are you ready for what the sign above is advertising?  Look below.

Here it is with Karen posing for size comparison.

Here is the label on the tongue.  It is a size 638-1/2.  Guinness confirmed that it is the largest boot in the world.

After lunch we rode around the town of Red Wing and hopped off at the Pottery Museum.  At one time in years past there were three pottery factories in town because there is great clay nearby that was mined.

This man put on a demonstration for us with a pottery wheel.  He grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan and attended Western Michigan University.  It is a small world indeed.

Crocks like this were common in America for a wide variety of uses.

The famous "Little Brown Jug" was made in this town and here is an exact copy on display.  It is the jug that the  University of Michigan and the University of Minnesota play for each fall.

As we headed back to the boat we noticed these interesting floating boat houses in the harbor.  They are here all year and rise and fall with the depth of the Mississippi.

Tomorrow, Friday, we disembark for an early bus ride back to St, Paul and our car.  It has been a fun trip and we are not quite done yet.

🚗  ✈  🚢

 

Minnesota - We Visit the Town of Winona by Land and by Water

 On Thursday we had breakfast while the boat was still chugging northbound, entered the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin, and left Iowa and Illinois behind.  We watched the boat land at the city dock and we boarded a bus for a hop-on / hop-off tour of Winona.  We found out that Winona is an Indian word meaning "first daughter."

We hopped off at the city history museum that had some interesting exhibits.  Here is Karen with a sleigh.

Here is Francis with some heavy-duty equipment.  (Imagine that)

Here is Bill with one of Winona's old fire engines.

After lunch we joined a group from our boat to get on another boat.  (much smaller)

This is our tour boat above, and we were taken on a 1-1/2 hour cruise into the backwaters of the Mississippi for some unusual sights.

These houses on floats are used as cottages, and some are permanent residences.  Many are tiny and sell for  as much as $150,000 or more.  The people get a five-year lease and do not own the land or pay property taxes.  Some run on generators or have no electricity at all.  The buildings go up and down with the depth of the river and stay at the same location.

We found the boat houses to be a strange place in which to live or vacation!

Now here is a RV not on wheels, but on stilts and floats to manage the river waters.  We certainly enjoyed our small houseboat tour, and the captain filled us full of so many local facts that we could hardly digest them all!  It was fun.

The section of the Mississippi in which we are traveling this week has 29 lock and dams to lift boats higher as we go upstream.  They are built and maintained by the Federal government and charge no fee for any boat - large or small.

This picture on the wall above our bed is an accurate portrayal of the Upper Mississippi and its tributaries.

Tomorrow is our last full day on the river, so if you are still with us on this journey - come back to see if we make it.

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Dubuque, Iowa - Another Beautiful River City

 This is what our boat, American Melody, looks like from the bow at most of our river ports when we dock:

And this is how we needed to dock on Tuesday morning in Dubuque:  (below)

After another delicious breakfast on the ship we boarded a hop-on hop-off bus for a tour of the city.

We climbed off here - at the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium, and it was a very good decision.   The exhibits were fantastic and a pleasure to see and experience.

These three volunteers were our tour guides.  (just kidding)

This big blue fish stood guard in front of a very-old paddle wheel tug boat that was open to the public to explore - and we did.

This aquarium full of diamond-back water snakes was really unusual and special to observe.  The weather again was excellent so it was another pleasant day on the Mississippi as we make our way north.

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Davenport, Iowa and Beyond

We awoke Monday to another crystal clear morning on the Mississippi River.  We were tied to the main dock at Davenport with the cities of Moline and Rock Island, Illinois just across the river.

Today our bus excursion took us sightseeing around Davenport and stopped at this location below:

Isabel Bloom was an artist who created and sold solid cement miniature statues and other art objects in her gallery in Davenport.  She has died, but here manufacturing gallery lives on, and gives tours to visitors.

This lady showed us how she handled the molds and how she opened each one up and cleaned the piece.

We caught this guy, above, looking down onto the manufacturing floor at the workers.  He said that  he loved work - "he could stand and watch it for hours!"  😏

Karen knew all about Isabel Bloom and was the main reason that we picked this tour.  She bought a small item to bring home to Michigan as a souvenir. 

Next our bus took us over the Mississippi into Illinois where we drove through Rock Island and Moline.  Above was a John Deere factory with new equipment parked outside.

It just so happens that the hourly workers at John Deere are on strike.  We passed these picketers at the entrance to one of the manufacturing plants.  Consequently, we could not visit any of the John Deere attractions that are frequent stops on tours.

Our boat pulled out of Davenport at 2:00 PM for a long northward journey tonight toward the town of Dubuque.  Stop by tomorrow to see what gives......

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A Sunday Visit to the Fort Madison, Iowa Area

 On Sunday morning, October 17, Bill woke up early and went to the front of the boat to get this snapshot of the sun rising above the mighty Mississippi.  It was the start of a crystal-clear day in southeast Iowa.

The tour we chose for today was the "Lee County Agritourism Experience" so we were soon off to the Farm you see on the sign above.

They were selling hundreds of pumpkins and gourds   They had a corn maze and plenty of fun areas for children to explore.

We saw this good-looking young couple by this truck so we got a photo!!!

The farm had numerous activities for young children including this "corn pool" filled with shelled corn for the kids to play in like sand at Lake Michigan.

The  store at Harvestville  Farm had a huge variety of canned goods but we have all the food we can manage back on the boat.

                     

After Harrisville Farm we got to visit a real working dairy farm and see the livestock.  Above are Francis and Karen in the barn holding the calves.  Bill had already seen it all having grown up in rural Cass County Michigan, and Francis had farming experience as a child.  The dairy farm also operated their own small cheese manufacturing process in a brand new building just down the road.

On Monday we visit another Iowa city on the Mississippi.....Davenport.

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