Wednesday, June 16 to Jackson, Minnesota

THE GREAT RIVER ROAD
Developed in 1938 the Great River Road is a collection of state, provincial, federal, and local roads which follow the course of the Mississippi River through ten states of the United States and two Canadian provinces. They are Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Manitoba, and Ontario.

It is not a road in the sense of a local, state or national highway but the term is instead used for tourism and historic purposes.

At 7 am I woke up to the sun poking through my window. A looked like a day of promise for the ride along the Mississippi.
But the morning was spent writing up the blog of the last few days.














So I only got on the road by noon. The ride along the Great River Road proved so interesting that I did not care about my schedule. I stopped several times to take in the sight of the " Mighty Mississip" and remembered how Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn floated down this river on their raft. They were great adventure books, I will have to read them again.

I managed to mount the GPS on my tank bag, in a position that would cut the glare of the sun. It worked, so finally I can look at the directions without taking my eyes off the road.
While punching the holes through the bag, the knife slipped and I got a deep cut on a finger, nothing serious but it bled quite copiously on to my clothes. Well, it will wear off, I hope.














A BMW cruiser was standing by the road and I met the owner, Glen from Milwaukee, who was refurbishing a second home on the river road.
He rode with me to Lansing, across a 3 mile bridge and up into Hosner park which presents a great view of the river and bridge.

I did not realize that in many places the Mississippi is not a straight river but a maze of back draws, bays and back eddies that make a wonderful area for fishing, boating or just hanging out on secluded sand beaches. People seem to enjoy it very much because there were many craft on the water.

After drinking a Fat Tire in a local saloon, we separated an since I had crossed the bridge at Lansing, I decided to continue west on Highway 9 and take in a little of the Iowa farming area.

The landscape was dominated by corn and more corn, in between berry farms and dairy farms.
I stopped in Cresco and bought a quart of freshly picked strawberries from a girl out of the back of a car. They were delicious.
It was 5 pm when I hit the interstate again and the sun was in the west and in my eyes.
I had planned to visit Tommy's parents in Lake Spirit, but that became impossible.
When evening came I checked into a motel in Jackson. Tomorrow will be a hot day and I will leave very early to reach the Badlands in South Dakota. And now I will have strawberries for dinner.