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Flying the Mississippi River north to south

flybill7

Well Known Member
In mid-September I did something I've wanted to do for a long time: fly the Mississippi River. I decided to start at the river's headwater in the north -- Lake Itasca, Minnesota -- and then fly the river down to New Orleans. I made it to about 100 miles north of New Orleans but couldn't proceed due to weather. Still, I had a great trip. The RV-7 flew great, about 26 hours.

I put together a blog of the trip: check it out: Link.

Here are a few pictures to give you the idea. (Left to right)

Lake Itasca, Minnesota - headwater of the Mississippi River

Passing by the Twin Cities -- Minneapolis and St. Paul

The Upper Mississippi south of the Twin Cities is very scenic

Tugboat pushing 15 barges down river

Passing by the St. Louis Gateway Arch

Cairo, Illiinois where the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers merge

Typical scene on the river -- large sand bar

tugboat pushing 35 barges down the river
 

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Great trip, great photos. Vlad would have landed on all the barges and bagged them as islands. :)
 
Great blog and pictures.

Sorry to have missed you at Creve Coeur. It is a great little airport with interesting stuff going on all the time, mostly in antiques, but a few Experimental and recently a few RVs.
I recognize lots of your pictures as I do most of my current RV flying up and down the rivers. Also, I grew up and learned to fly in MN so have quite a few hours flying the upper Mississippi.
 
Great Trip Huck Finn

Hey Bill,

Enjoyed the write-up and pics. I use to live in southern Illinois for four years. I had a C-182 that I kept at KSAR. A couple points of interest - when you flew over the river by Perryville Regional, the little town across the river on the Illinois side is Chester. Chester is the town where E C Segar was born and later authored the Popeye character and comic strip. Supposedly the character of each of those in the comic strip was based on folks in the town. Popeye a barge working scrapper, Wimpy a hardware store owner that would send for food at a nearby diner and pay for it each Tuesday, Olive Oil and old maid in town....all this was written in the local paper when they have the Popeye festival. When you come over the bridge to Chester there is a big bronze statue of Popeye with a time capsule.

In addition when you get to Cairo, IL where the Ohio River meets the Mississippi....about 20 miles up the Ohio is the town of Metropolis (which is isn't)....can you guess which comic strip character is linked by Illinois legislative resolution 572 passed in the 70's?
 
Ski resort

Yea just south of Dubuque you'll see Chestnut mountain ski resort. It's close to Galena IL. Awesome pics, thanks.
 
Awesome pictures! A friend called me today and mentioned that I should look at this thread. Looking at your blog, I wished I had known earlier of your trip. You had to have flown pretty close to my place/strip as I live on the Southeast side of Itasca. When I depart my strip and clear the trees (headed NW) I have Lake Itasca in view.
I did have to laugh at your comment of being surprised President Trump showed up at such a 'remote' place. Sure doesn't feel remote to me. LOL Wish all the lake home and vacationers would go home. ;)
 
I read your entire blog for this trip and enjoyed it. I took a couple more photos for you of the Mississippi and Ohio converge. I wondered how they get those big barges under the bridge on the Ohio just upstream of the the converge. rivers are beautiful, especially from the air.

ohioriver1.jpg


miss_meets_ohio.jpg


meeting2.jpg


*********

while in El Paso, I walked across the Rio Grande as it was bone dry. I was hoping to get a photo of it.

this is my favorite photo op around the El Paso area, El Capitan. I was East bound in the AM. It takes a full tank of fuel just to fly across Texas.

el_capitan.jpg
 
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