🎶…..Meet me in St Louis…..🎵
We leave Memphis by coach instead of on the boat as scheduled as the water level in the Mississippi is so low that northbound travel is subject to frequent delays. Both to allow commercial traffic right of way and because the river is periodically blocked by barges that have come loose from their tu...
Elvis Whitewashed
”Old Man River” really lived up to its name, although not perhaps in the way intended. Our progress up river from Greenville to Memphis was a very slow plod. At one point, we were stopped for 14 hours. Not far upstream from us, a tug had lost control of its complement of barges which scattered acros...
Rolling On The River…..
In retrospect, perhaps this wasn’t the best year to cruise the 1500 miles (2500 km) up the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Minneapolis. This year, or at least this time of the year, the “Mighty Mississippi” isn’t that mighty. Water levels are at historic lows; sandbanks that are usually deep u...
The Delta’s Belly-Button
Despite what the name suggests, “The Delta” is not part of the delta of the Mississippi River, but instead is part of an alluvial plain created by regular flooding of the Mississippi & Yazoo Rivers over many millennia. The very fertile Delta region is bounded to the north by Memphis, to the south by...
Highway 61….Visited
Highway 61 runs for 1400 miles (2300 km) north from New Orleans to Wyoming, Minnesota mostly following the course of the Mississippi. We encountered the road briefly in Natchez and then picked it up again in Vicksburg. The city of Vicksburg which at the turn of the 20th Century rivaled Natchez for w...
The Deepest South of All….**
Around the turn of the 20th Century, the city of Natchez built on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi had the reputation of being one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest city in the entire United States. At the very least, it boasted of the most millionaires of any city in the country. Wealth b...
The Kingfish’s Ghost
Baton Rouge, some 80 miles (110 km) northwest of New Orleans is Louisiana’s state capital. Now perhaps best known in the US as the home of LSU (Louisiana State University) with some 80,000 students and a massive college sports programme, the city is still dominated by the ghost of Louisiana’s one-ti...
Taking it E-Z(ee)
Our Mississippi voyage had been originally been slated to start near the mouth of the river in the “Big-EZ(ee)” as New Orleans is “affectionately” known - when we booked this trip more than three years ago!! However years of lower than average rainfall has meant that water levels in the river are at...