On the river

Today was a day of contrasts - a collection of visuals that just do not seem to fit one day - Kate skiing at home and 5 degrees when I fed the birds.  Our neighbor Dick chauffeuring us to the Twin City airport, a landing in St Louis, then landing in New Orleans - taking a taxi to the Riverfront not far from the French Quarter and getting on the Queen of the Mississippi.

This gorgeous boat brought paddlewheels back to the river after a gap where the river was absent the big boats that could cruise long distances.  Nice to be here and to see the riverfront on a warm muggy evening.


 Kate is adding a new dimension to the river story this year.  Riding a pig on a paddlewheel on the Mississippi.
 Ships passing in the dark.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New Zealand Birds

Image
By Kate Crowley As soon as I saw the kookaburra, the song started playing in my head, “Kookaburra lives in the old gum tree, merry, merry old……”  I don’t know how often I sang that song in school or at Campfire Girl gatherings, but I never could have imagined as a child that one day I’d see the real live bird in the wild. This kookaburra however was not sitting in a gum tree.  It was perched on a wire alongside a road on the North Island of New Zealand.  The kookaburra is a native of Australia and was introduced like so many others here. New Zealand, having been separated from Australia for millions of years had its own unique flora and fauna. But as soon as people arrived, the composition began to change.  Native birds were killed off – the Moas (there were nine species) being the most famous. These birds were bigger than the ostrich (12ft) and had hair-like feathers and no vestigial wings.  Its big size and unfamilarity with a predator as efficient as man brought it to exti
Read more

Sense of Place

Image
GOING NATURE’S WAY By Kate Crowley I am intrigued by the idea of Sense of Place; to feel completely ‘at home’ in one particular place.  I have read that people who grow up on the Great Plains feel claustrophobic when they are in forested environments and in reverse,  people who have grown up surrounded by forest find the openness of the plains unnerving, with nothing to break the view to the horizon. I grew up in the city, but the Minnehaha Creek and Parkway were just two blocks away and I spent countless hours playing and exploring there.  The city lakes were within biking distance. The Mississippi River was just blocks away from the apartment where I lived the first four years of my life.  When I was 36 I married Mike and moved to our current home and it was perfect.  When my dad first visited us in our new home, he said, “Kate must think she’s died and gone to heaven”.  This is where I am supposed to be.  Scientists who have studied the evolution of humanity have proposed
Read more

Sabula, Iowa, the Island City

Image
This is an amazing location that I did not know about until I went by on my boat.  Sabula is truly an island city and the only one on the river.  Across the river is Savanna, IL. Sabula is 1/4 miles wide and 1 mile long and connected by causeways to Iowa and Illinois.   Legend has it that Isaac Dorman crossed the river on a log and decided to settle here.  Must have been quite a log and a strange wind/current that day.  Sabula was the site of a button factory - clam shell buttons.  Strangely it was also the site of hog butchering.   Originally the island was surrounded by marshland, but when Lock and Dam #13 was put in the pool flooded the marsh and made the town in to a water surrounded island.   The Geneology Trails site says:  Commercial fishing is engaged in to a considerable extent with about 120,000 pounds of rough fish - carp, buffalo and perch - and about 25,000 pounds of dressed catfish being shipped annually. The town was platted and recorded in Dubu
Read more