On our way into Dubuque from Cassville, we paddle halfway and it starts to rain, hard. The river is two miles wide from the dam up ahead, and across the open water, the wind starts sweeping waves across at us that crest and rock the canoes. Danny zips on his rainjacket, but it is still warm and I decide to stay shirtless, thinking the thing will pass. Instead it whips into me and covers the lake, hits my body in tiny drops that feel like hail, and pretty soon I can hardly see. I put on my sunglasses so I can steer, but water still runs down into my eyes and makes the whole world look crazy. To avoid the wind, we hide behind a long stone wall jutting out into the river, and end up right in the middle of a huge stump field, the remains of old, chopped-down trees protruding ominously from the shallow water. Through the orange sunglass lenses, the thing looks like something out of the Apocalypse. Danny yells a warcry up in the bow, and I can hardly hear it. It is raining harder than I've ever seen.
Behind the stone wall is a marina, and when we finally get there we decide to pack in from the inclement weather. We call Tom Orr, who'd agreed to host us for the night, and even though we're an hour and a half early and eight miles away, he says it's no problem and he'll be there in half an hour. We thank him, and sit under a pavilion watching the rain come down, shivering, waiting.
He shows up with his wife Susie, and there's room for four with Susie and just one with Tom due to all the gear clogging up the backseat. I go with Tom, and he takes me through downtown Dubuque and shows me the sights. There are beautiful old churches and breweries, and huge estates set up in the hills. He tells me it's so much better this way than by the arterial road Susie took with Kev, Danny and Stoa. "Up there you'll just see everything you always see," he says. "Home Depot, Walmart... One thing I can't stand about America nowadays is how every town looks the same. You used to be able to tell them apart. Now, you walk around blindfolded, you don't even know where you are."
At the house, he hands me a beer and tells me we'll get the canoe off the car later. The other guys come up, and the whole thing is wonderful. There is homemade salsa, and good beer. There are hot showers and (king-size!) beds and tiny hors d'oeuvres of tomato, basil, cream cheese and cracker. We tell them you don't have to do all this, really, but they wave us off. "Don't worry about it," they say. "We just love having guests. For us, this is fun."
The next day, they go even further and lend us their car. It is a beautiful day and we drive into town with the Eagles' "Life's Been Good" playing on the radio ("My maserati goes one-eighty five..."). With the windows down, we yell as loud as we can. "Waaah! Waaah!" we scream, "Mississippi Project! Waaah! Waaah!" It is something you should all try at home.
In town, we visit the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium. Stoa tells the lady at the door that we are paddling the river and she lets us right on through. Inside, we watch a wonderful video about the river and its history, and look at pictures of old generals and steamboat captains. We play with a barge pilothouse simulator but can't keep the thing from running into the shore. We look at river timelines, and learn from a barge video that 55 million tons of grain are exported from the Mississippi River every year. In accelerated time, it only takes seven seconds to go through the locks, and the life of the barge deckhand just seems so damn romantic. We look at how far we have come from Minnesota to here, and at how far we still have to go. We remember the awe of the river all over again. "This isn't just any river. This is the Mississippi River," says one man in the opening video. "It is as great an American icon as the Statue of Liberty or the Golden Gate Bridge." Quotes are everywhere, too good and numerous to digest them all. Mark Twain, T.S. Eliot, Langston Hughes. There is Norman Maclean, telling you, "Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it." There is Theodore Roosevelt and Chief Seattle, and Heraclitus, so wise, saying, "You can not step into the same river twice." And then perhaps the most simplistic but also the most honest of them all, in the gift shop written across the wall, there is Winnie the Pooh: "Sometimes, if you stand on a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away...you will suddenly know everything there is to be known."
And that is just the museum. The aquarium has huge fish, crazy fish. It has Cowanose Rays, and bottom-feeding Sturgeon, and four-and-a-half foot Blue Catfish with their whiskers waving out ahead. In one huge tank, an alligator lies half submerged in the water, completely still. "Is that thing real?" one woman incredulously asks her husband, and the alligator slowly blinks its eye. We learn about the poisonous snakes and water mocassins and snapping turtles awaiting us in the Louisiana bayous, and I realize we are going to die. All I can see is dismembered limbs and misty cypress trees. "I'm not trying to become an amputee," Danny says, and asks a museum employee what the best weapon would be to battle the alligators. "A shotgun?" Danny asks. "Nope," says the employee. "Wouldn't do it."
We wander over to the gift shop, and it is the busiest place in the whole museum. People mill about, looking at books and stuffed animals and American River sweet cherry wine, and imitation medicine pouches from a culture we destroyed long ago. There are custom Monopoly sets, train whistles, jaw whistles, rubber duckies, scented candles, t-shirts, track jackets, sweatshirts, hats, postcards, "Snake Crossing" signs, ships in bottles. It is the busiest place in the whole museum. "You ready up there?" asks the cashier as people make their way to the checkout. The Winnie the Pooh quote sits scrawled on the wall, looking at where it's made it to, staring silently down and taking in the whole scene.
Afterwards, we walk across the parking lot to Diamond Jo Casino, where there are far more cars parked than at the museum. We drive to the Fenelon Plaza Elevator, which goes up the main bluff of town and is the shortest, steepest railroad in the world. We stand at the top of it and gaze out at the city, and the river with the museum and casino on its banks, slowly slipping away. We're tired from all the sightseeing, and don't say much. We lean against the rail and bask in the sun, and after a while, we walk back down the hill.
Tomorrow, we are driving down to Savannah, Illinois, where we will be picking up our journey again. Enjoy the pictures and videos below, and miss us just a little. We'll miss you a little too, and we'll check in with you soon. Peace, love, goodnight. TMP
