Wandering Around Wabasha

A few weeks ago, a friend and I visited another friend at her new home in Wabasha, Minnesota. Such a quaint little town! My friend had fallen in love with it a long time ago, and a year ago, she up and moved two hundred miles away to be where she felt called. How I admire her.

Resting on the Mississippi River banks, Wabasha is Minnesota's oldest city and longest continuously inhabited river town. It was first settled in 1826 and officially became a city in 1830.

Wabasha was a bustling town, with logging, shipping, flour milling, trading, and clamming. The discarded clam shells could be used to make buttons, which led to a booming button industry.   

The bridge over the Mississippi.

The historic Anderson House.

The hotel opened in 1856 and was Minnesota's oldest continuously operating inn west of the Mississippi River.

The hotel's restaurant was known for its Dutch cooking. The hotel itself was famous for the cats that could stay in the rooms with hotel guests for overnight companionship.

I'm sure the rest of the buildings in town have fascinating stories as well.

 

Fall Vacation Entry # 4

Last Wednesday, we headed home after a few days of visiting with the Hubby’s brother and sister-in-law in Iowa. I seem to have lost track of how many times I have driven around in Iowa and I always find new and interesting things to see. So, I’m tellin’ ya – don’t knock Iowa.  A person could take a week’s vacation there and not see it all. 

 Anyway, we only had those few days there this year and it was time to head home. We drove north along the Mississippi River crossing into Illinois at Savanna.

 Following highway 84, a small sign for a scenic overlook caught my eye and I hollered at the Hubby to turn west down Army Depot Road. Little did I know where that was going to lead!

This place was totally fascinating to me.

 This sign alone wouldn’t have kept me from wandering off into the restricted areas. I had my responsible Hubby driving the car, so there would be no wandering, no arrests and no explosions this day.

 The only sign of life we saw, other than a few flocks of birds.

  The Savanna Army Depot was a 13,000-acre site on the east bank of the Mississippi River just north of Savanna.  Opened in 1917, first as a weapons testing facility, it later became an ammunition depot. After WWI, warehouses were built to store ammunition. The base really boomed during WWII, when employment there jumped from 143 to 7,195. A construction boom built several new warehouses, a new power plant and 407 “igloos” to store ammo and other volatile weapons like mustard gas.

 The base went through several changes over the years, but by 1995, the writing was on the wall. Five years later, the Depot officially shut down, transferring 9,400 acres of land to the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge.

 Made it to the scenic overlook.

My imagination could still just go wild in a place like this. 

Woes Along the River - vacation day 2

Saturday was our first real day of vacation, first day to relax and unwind, to sleep in and not have anywhere to go. If you know me at all, you know it didn’t really work out that way. I had a full schedule planned for every day.

The first day, however, I actually thought we could take it easy, check out our surroundings and the little town closest to our resort.

The Mississippi River town of Clarksville boasts a population of 547. Lock and Dam number 24 is right on the doorstep of town, so we spent much of the first morning watching a barge go through. Why is that so fascinating? Probably because to my simple mind it is a major feat of engineering.

When we finally tore ourselves away from the Lock, we walked along the river front and the hubby started up a conversation with a woman who was checking to see how far the River had risen since the day before. Turns out she was the mayor, JoAnne Smiley. Leave it to my husband to meet the mayor.  

We had a long conversation with her regarding flooding in her little town. Clarksville is the last town in Missouri whose downtown district faces the Mississippi River. Other towns either are set far enough back from the River or they built permanent levies so that they don’t have to worry about flooding. Cute little Clarksville doesn’t have the money (half a million dollars) to build a levy, plus the little shops along the River are so quaint it would be a shame to shield them with a wall of dirt. When it looks like flood waters are moving in, the town rallies with their sandbags and defends their little downtown.  According to the mayor, because of this they have never had losses from flooding, and because of that the federal government won’t give them any money to prevent disaster.  

 A few days later I was sharing the woes of Clarksville with a local from a town up River, and she didn’t have any sympathy for her neighbors to the south. She just thought they should build a levy, and didn’t believe me when I said it sounded like it was cost-prohibitive.

On our way home the end of the week, I told my brother-in-law all of this. He works for the Army Corps of Engineers which deals yearly with flooding of the Mississippi. He had yet another view of this problem.

Because my little pea-brain doesn’t want to hear the facts and figures, only wants to take in what is beautiful, I have no solutions for anyone. All I have is more pictures from our first day. 

Didn't eat here. Sorry, Tubby. 

The old episcopal church which is now the beautiful art studio of Mary O. We spent probably an hour talking with her and touring her home.  

Water fowl at the Clarence Cannon Wildlife Refuge.  I thought the sign said "canyon" so I was hoping for some great scenery. Water fowl is ok though too.  

At Cuivre River State Park near Troy. We didn't stay long. We were getting tired by then and headed into Troy for Dairy Queen and to get the car washed. 

A Short and Quiet Vacation

July 26, 2009 - For several years now, I have thought that the coolest thing would be to type my travel journal directly into a laptop as I traveled. I love my paper journals, but I think that they are becoming obsolete. Well, maybe not. It is still great to page back through them to read what everyone’s thoughts were in their own handwriting and witness the chocolate stains or French fry grease. But I still feel that, today, on this trip, I have moved on.

I am typing into my new used laptop, maybe not as it is happening, but at least the same day, having returned to the vacation home of one of Himey’s friends, after a day of bumming around. And now I will type in our trip so far, and thus save it for all posterity, or at least until this laptop crashes.

Himey and I are in Alma, Wisconsin, to spend a couple days at the vacation home of one of his friends. The house is small but perfect for a vacation. It sits on the bluff above the Mississippi River and has a fantastic view of the river and the dam and lock.

After we arrived and unpacked, we drove up to Buena Vista Park and Overlook. What beautiful views of the river and Minnesota. Then rode around Alma a bit. Being built on a small stretch of land between the Mississippi and a bluff there isn’t much room to spread out. Pioneers to the area weren’t evidently daunted by that, they just built up the side of the ridiculously steep hill.

For dinner, we tried Julie’s Fin and Feather Inn. The name doesn’t sound so appetizing, does it? Makes me think “pet store”. I imagine chickens being plucked and fish being gutted on the patio behind the restaurant. And these animals all have names like Cluckers and Speedy and Sid. That’s why we went with pizza.

After dinner, we drove to the lock and dam (lock and dam number 4 to be exact – there are 29 of them on the Mississippi between the Twin Cities and St. Louis and 11 of them are in Minnesota). We watched several small boats go through the lock, but no barges. I can’t believe that they move that much water – it has to be tens of thousands of gallons - for just any little boat that comes along.

Back at the house, the only excitement of the day occurred. Around nine, Himey went out on the deck to check the evening weather. I was about to follow him out when he came charging back in. “Bats.” Which was way more than he should have said because then I was all paranoid that bats would sneak in and get stuck in my hair.

Ha, ha, with the purchase of that old new used laptop, I wrote the remaining travel journal entries as they happened. Which means the next few weeks, until I am all up to speed in 2011, my blog entries are pretty much already written. And before you know it, I will be off to better and bigger things in this blog. Please stay tuned for lots of change.