I came up with the idea for this project almost two years ago. Since then, I have road tripped across some 34,000 miles of Great River Road blacktop; eaten at dives and fine dining establishments; slept in flea bag motels and in royal comfort; visited dozens of small town museums and libraries; danced the salsa with a male friend at a Mexican restaurant; and enjoyed the presence of the river in ways both sublime (watching the sun set from a blufftop campsite at Wyalusing State Park) and ridiculous (cheesy river cruises). And now, finally, I have something to show for it all; well, at least I will early next year. More about that in a minute.

If the summer of 2007 was a long trial run—trying to figure out if this project was feasible and, if so, how to make it reality—I spent the second summer fine-tuning. I am learning to balance the type of the work, so that I don’t leave all of the unpleasant (for me) tasks for the end. After all, I have a tough time getting excited about visiting a place when all that is left to do is verify the hours that stores are open and to visit a bunch of motels to check prices and make sure that cockroaches haven’t taken over. At the same time, with as much as I enjoy reading local history books, a week sitting in libraries reading old tomes is overkill.

Maybe because I was bored with the more routine tasks this summer, I started making regular visits to old churches. What started as an innocent habit, though, has evolved into a systematic part of my research. It seems that I’m not the only person interested in church architecture, so I’m going to include historical churches in future guides, as long as I don’t get too bogged down by the extra work. I just need to be more ecumenical; most of the churches I visited this summer were Catholic.

As I mentioned, I’ve also been visiting a lot of libraries and pouring through local history books this year. I seriously underestimated how long this was going to take. Even for small towns, it can take hours to sort through the available books and binders. Much of this summer I was working on the chapter that covers the river from just north of the Quad Cities to Lansing, Iowa/De Soto, Wisconsin, an area that includes 47 river towns. So far, my library visits have yielded written histories for 32 of those towns. That’s not too bad, I suppose, but I still have histories to research and write for three of the communities with the most intriguing stories: Dubuque, Galena, and Prairie du Chien. I’ll be working on those in the coming weeks.

So here’s the year-end wrap-up: I took 19 trips, counting a few local drives, and put another 16,000 miles on the Prius driving the River Road. This year’s festival list is shorter than last year’s but is still a good effort:

So what’s next? I’m planning an overhaul of the website that I hope to have completed by spring. I will be adding more destination-specific content for communities along the river, in addition to continuing this blog. I am trying to coordinate the rollout of the new content with the publication of the first volume of the travel guide.

Yes, the first volume of this project is nearly done and should be available by the spring. Yea! I decided earlier this year to turn each of the planned eight chapters into a book in its own right. The manuscript for the Quad Cities chapter is now in the hands of the publisher and should be magically transformed into a book in a few weeks. I hope to finish another chapter before the end of winter, so that that I have two volumes for sale when the snow melts and people start to hit the River Road again. Naturally, I’ll let you know when the books are ready.

May you all have a pleasant holiday season, and, if not, give yourself a break and take a drive along the River Road. Gas is cheap, and the river downs don’t shut down in the winter.

© Dean Klinkenberg, 2008