Mississippi River Journey

We had been planning to drive along the mighty Mississippi River for a couple of years, but never seemed to make it because of happenstance.  So this year we are finally doing it.  After a rather eventful trip though Virginia and across Tennessee during which we experienced some engine problems that took a trip to Cummins Factory Service in Knoxville to solve we finally stopped in W. Memphis Arkansas and stayed right on the river bank at Tom Sawyers RV Park.  The pictures below show what we saw every day and river barge traffic runs all day and throughout the night.

Above and below was the sunset on our first night in camp.

Below gives an idea how close to the river we were parked and a typical load of barges being pushed upriver. The standard barge is 195 feet long, 35 feet wide, and can be used in 9-feet of water. Its capacity is 1500 tons. Some of the newer barges today are 290 feet by 50 feet, double the capacity of earlier barges.  I cannot estimate the length of these.  We saw as many as 26 barges being pushed by a single "tow" boat.  The name Towboat is a throwback to the canal era when a single barge was pulled by a team of mules. 

Three or four barges side-by-side and as many as 6 or 7 end-to-end are pushed by the tow.  It looks like there are creature comforts aboard and all the modern electronic navigation equipment too.

And finally the sunset on our last evening here, 

Election Night November 6, 2012.

Yesterday as we finished breakfast, Cathy noticed a bird floating over the river and occasionally diving down  to take something from the water.  We watched it for several minutes and decided it was the American Kestrel and it displayed its characteristic behavior of "hovering" facing into the wind and adjusting only with small wing or tail movements.  When it spotted breakfast, it would dive straight down.  The picture is not mine, but one I found on the internet.

Tomorrow we head farther down the river to Lake Chicot State Park in Arkansas.  I'll tell you more about it in my next post.