The Mighty Mississippi River

Wisconsin – Illinois – Iowa

We’re still driving the Great River Road in WI., most of todays drive was in GREAT need of being repaved, it’s sad the way, we as a nation, have let our roads fall into such a state of needing repaired. Anyway we drove through several small towns with 30-35 mile speed limits, slow down………. get back up to speed, a few miles later slow down and start all over again, RUBY ain’t the fastest at getting back up to speed.

On our way to Blackhawk Corps of Engineers park (COE), I almost had a heart stopping moment while pulling in to the CG toooooo……………..Whew, nothing really dangerous, but it was almost very un-fun. The turn to get into the CG is a true 180 degrees, I thought sure I miscalculated and we were going to need to unhook the jeep and back up to finish making the turn. Like I said, the turn is 180 degrees, it also goes down a slight hill, with only a curb keeping you from going off the edge of the road. In RUBY, you set in front of the wheels, so going around the curve I’m pretty much sticking out over the edge, with nothing under me, just waiting for the front wheel to bump the curb, it didn’t and we made it around the corner but it couldn’t have been by much.

Had to run the AC’s today for the first time since leaving southern hades almost a month and half ago. We stayed 2 nights there, and only needed the AC for the one day & night thankfully.

Downstream to another COE park, Blanding Landing, Illinois, This was another interesting drive, first we ( detoured) from the main road that said Illinois Great River Road, to another road labeled as the Great River Road, it started out as a striped 2 lane road that dwindled down to an itybity county road with no shoulder and no guard rail, I was happy that we didn’t meet too many cars on that road, it also had a long steep hill that starting at the bottom, 20MPH, that’s not the speed we ended up at the top of the hill, it was considerably slower that that. Wound our way back to the main drag, then a little later,  9 more miles of skinny back roads to get to the CG. This CG was almost a mistake. All the spots are on grass, no gravel, it wouldn’t be so bad, except we were kinda in-between  rain showers, the grass was just starting to dry out, we spent 2 nights here and of course it rained some, I was sweating that we would be able to get out on the gravel without spinning, made it with no issues, the reason I was really worried is the forecast had off and on rain predicted for several more days, that was our driest window to move.

Its probably a good thing we moved too, because about 1/2 way to our next COE spot, Clark’s Ferry, Iowa, we drove through a super fine mist…………… RUBY and the Jeep are in desperate need of a bath now.

It’s really strange, we spent several days with the river running right to left, now we’re on the other side of the river and everything is floating left to right……….. backwards:)

Today, 9/29 12:20, it’s so foggy that I can’t see the channel marker that’s located about midway in the river.

9/30 we moved about another 100 miles downstream to Keokuk IA. We just stayed 1 night there, the plan was for 2 nights BUT, it was HOT, just like hades, and we need to run the AC all day and that night. The CG was nothing but a parking lot that we had to ourselves and we would have stayed if there was any shade.

Anyway, 10/1 we put the Mississippi River in the rear view and the sun in our eyes for our migration east.

Trains, trains & more trains, if I had a complaint about our stays along the river it would be the trains, along the IL-WI side they were really hauling A$$, at Blanding Landing out of necessity we parked near the tracks, not only were the horns LOUD but we could feel the rumbling, through the ground, as they whizzed by.  On the IA side they didn’t go all that fast but we were in sorta a straight part of the river and you could hear the horns coming for miles away, starting soft and the closer they got the louder they were, they blared the horns at every road crossing, there sure were a lot of road crossings because it was almost 1 constant honking. At least for the most part, on both sides of the river, they didn’t really run at night.