The Great River Road along Lake Pepin

The Great River Road along Lake Pepin

The Mississippi River Parkway Commission, the folks responsible for marketing the Great River Road, are celebrating their 75th birthday this month, and they don’t look a day over 25! The Great River Road is the realization of an idea that is almost as old as the horseless carriage, the dream of creating a national highway along the Mississippi River. The first transcontinental route, the Lincoln Highway, was dedicated in 1913, but plans for a highway along the Mississippi River followed soon after that. I have a copy of a newspaper article from 1920 the describes  the publication of a map for the Mississippi River Scenic Highway in Iowa.

The creation of the highway has made it easier for people without a boat to get up close and personal with the Mississippi River. The branding of the route also helped secure funds to upgrade the road surfaces in many areas, even if some places have gone too far in modernizing the roadway. I was surprised and disappointed, for example, the first time I drove the Blues Highway, US Highway 61 in Mississippi. The modern four-lane highway bypasses most of the famed river communities and the Mississippi is usually nowhere in sight.

I’ve driven every mile of the Great River Road from the Headwaters to the Ohio River (and much of it further south). I don’t say that to brag, just to offer my credentials . I’d like to think I know the upper half of the river very well, yet I sometimes struggle to answer the basic question: “What is there to do in place X?”

I thought about this recently after a conversation I had with a man from New York City who was traveling along the Mississippi River. We were near La Crosse (Wisconsin), and he asked me what I thought he should see in that river city. I started to tell him about the Hixon House and a couple of museums and chapels, but he interrupted me: “Hey, I’m from New York City. We have the best museums there. What else you got?”

I was dumbstruck and told him I’d think about it. If I’d had a chance to get back to him, which I didn’t, I would have told him to head down to the brewery, pick a small bar to enter, and enjoy a beer and conversation. That’s probably not bad advice for anyone, but it’s about all I could come up with for someone who has already seen it all.

There are plenty of world-class attractions along the Mississippi, even to satisfy those who think they’ve seen it all. It’s true that many of the smaller museums lack the display window flashiness of a Louvre or Guggenheim, but they can still tell you a lot, like how a town got started, who settled there, the ups and downs they’ve faced, and who graduated in the high school class of 1947. That doesn’t make them less interesting or less worthy of your time, it just means, like patiently licking through the solid sugar coating off a Tootsie Pop to reach the gooey tootsie roll in the center, you have to spend a little time to find the reward.

My advice for most people is to pick a small area along the Great River Road, like McGregor (Iowa) or Pepin (Wisconsin), for example, and spend a few days there, maybe an extended weekend. Pick a place to eat and go more than once. On the second visit you’ll be treated like a regular. Talk to people. Go to the river a few times a day and sit and watch for half an hour. Maybe you’ll even meet someone with a boat who will take you on the river.

Stay in a small motel or bed and breakfast, the kind of place that allows you to spend time with the owner. Ask questions. Listen. Seriously, listen. Read a book, preferably one about the region, like one of the Mississippi Valley Traveler books. Wake up when you want to and don’t schedule the whole day in advance.

By the end of your long weekend, you’ll have had a more intimate experience with the river than most visitors and much more so than if you’d spent that same weekend driving 300 miles a day to see as much as you could. The greatest attraction of the Great River Road is the river itself, and its charms are subtle and easy to miss when passing by at 70 miles per hour. You have to slow down and experience the river on its terms instead of yours.

Once you’ve traveled this way, I dare you to find the enthusiasm for traveling any other way.

Happy birthday, Mississippi River Parkway Commission!

© Dean Klinkenberg, 2013