Crossing the Mississippi- 2017 style

When you plan a vacation, you make a general idea of where you are going to go and what you are going to do and then the vacation happens---sometimes you have a flat tire and sometimes your tent blows down--those are the makings of memories.  BUT sometimes, little amazing things happen that you couldn't have planned for, but they are perfect for you.

For Gary and I, lovers of trains and bridges, we had that moment crossing the Mississippi River on June 8th.  Now we had been on this bridge before on our first trip to Nauvoo in 1997 (notice exactly 20 years ago--with all five of our kids ages 14 through to 9 months old) but we didn't know it was "magic" until this trip.

As we approached the bridge, we noticed first that the traffic was completely stopped. And then we noticed the draw bridge portion pulled out of place. People were out of the cars and taking pictures as the barge was slowly pushed under the opened area of the river.  How cool is that!  Definately a photo taking moment!

 The piece of bridge pulled out of the way to allow the barge to past.

 This was both a car bridge on the top level and a train bridge on the bottom level.  Here is the train tracks running beside and below the road where we were stopped on the bridge.

Here is the barge along with a tog boat which is used to power the barge through the opening in the bridge.  While in Nauvoo they talked about the Mississippi and shared some amazing facts about these barges.  They provide transport for goods from around 36 states and replace something like 2435 18-wheelers (or some big number like that) when they are a fully loaded barge which can have containers three across (like this one) and four or five deep) . This one was three deep, I think.  I didn't really think about river travel of goods anymore, but it is quite important to our economy.

The Mississippi River--it is a slow, muddy river with lots of debris floating in it.  Nothing like the fast paced and clean waters of the Columbia River where I grew up.

 Here comes the beginning of the tug boat.....

 The bridge begins to move back into place.

Almost......

 And off we go--

making our journey across the river in about  5 minutes or so of driving. It was nothing like the crossing of the pioneers in February of 1846 when they walked across the ice. More on that later.

And with that, we entered Illinois and prepared to head to Nauvoo, just a short journey to the south.