Category: Mississippi River 2022
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Day 30 – St Louis Icons

We are spending three days in the St Louis area, enough for a tiny taste of what there is to see and do here. Our tour brought us to three of the most significant and impressive today, October 15. Our first stop was the Old Missouri State Supreme Courthouse. Here, the appeal of Dred and…
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Days 27 & 28 – Mark Twain

No Mississippi River trip would be complete without a chapter on Mark Twain. Although quite a lot was written about Mississippi River life and culture during the 1800’s, Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn made their time come to life around the world. And so our tour spent a couple of days in Hannibal exploring…
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Day 26 – Amana Colonies

On October 11 we were introduced to the Amana Colonies. These seven little villages and the 26,000 acres of land surrounding them have a very unique position in the history of American immigration. Amana means “faithful” or “true”. It was a name chosen by a group of German Lutherans who broke away from the church…
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Days 24 & 25 – catching up

We have been soooooooo busy the past few days that I haven’t been able to stay awake long enough at the end of the day to update this diary. So I’m going to catch up a couple of days to get back on track. Hope it works! On October 9, our day began with a…
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Days 22 & 23 – Road tripping, eagles, and the River

Sometimes on this trip we have two road tripping days in a row. On these occasions we have a little touring added to the itinerary so we aren’t arriving at our destination bleary-eyed and white-knuckled. This is the tale of October 7 and 8, the start of our second week with the Mississippi River Run…
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Day 21 – A lucky day

This is October 6, the end of our first week on the Mississippi River Run tour. It’s an unscheduled day, so we could do what we wanted. We got our laundry done the night before so just had a few groceries to pick up and a fuel tank to fill. We wanted to take Gracie…
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Day 20 – Water, wood and music

It’s a given that when your tour follows a river there will be water experiences. We had a great one today. We also had some surprising ones involving things we both love. What a great day! Our day began with a cruise on the Mississippi. As we were waiting to board our boat we saw…
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Day 19 – St Paul – saints and sinners

At 8:00 am sharp our bus departed the campground for a full day mostly in St Paul, the capital of Minnesota. First stop was Minnehaha Falls, a park in Minneapolis. The park was inspired by the poem Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This poem created interest in the American frontier in general and…
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Days 17 & 18 – on the road again

This tour is loosely following the Great River Road, a national scenic byway that loosely follows the Mississippi River for its entire length. All this looseness has led to some quirky route planning to get us to locations included on the itinerary, as well as to campgrounds that can accommodate our group of 24 RV’s.…
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Day 15 – Day 1 of our Mississippi River tour

It’s September 30, the day our Mississippi River tour begins. All of the participants have arrived now. We had an administrative meeting with everyone this afternoon where we had brief introductions to the trip leaders and all of the travelers. We represent 12 states, as well as Australia. There are seven first-timers in the group,…
