Listing Through Life

Spirit of Dubuque

Posted on September 14, 2013 by Roger

For lunch we skipped the museum snack shop and walked to the nearby Ice Harbor Restaurant because IT WAS ON A BOAT!

This turned out to sound a great deal more exciting than it was. The dining room was tiny and crowded. The one waitress was over-busy and not very competent. And the food was mediocre and over-priced.

But we had a nice time chatting and gazing into each others’ eyes while we planned the rest of our day. Which turned out to involve a ride on the Spirit of Dubuque, a stern-wheeled paddle boat. We were told about thirty times that this is the only paddle-driven excursion boat on the Mississippi or Missouri Rivers. I don’t know about that, but I do know we’ve taken rides before this on “paddle wheel” boats that had wheels for decoration only. This boat had a diesel engine, and the wheels actually turned and moved the boat.

Which was kinda funny because all the people who thought they’d scored great seats on the rear deck scrambled for cover when the boat backed out of its birth and the wheels threw water all over them. In fact, everyone, us included, were soon looking for seats near the front of the boat to escape the diesel fumes.

The Dubuque Rail Bridge that crosses from Dubuque to East Dubuque, Illinois. Shortly after the tracks cross the bridge, they enter a tunnel on the Illinois side. The tower on the Iowa side, visible in the photo below, is a shot tower where lead was dropped into water to create shot for ammunition.

We sailed north first, with Iowa on our left and Illinois, and then Wisconsin on our right. The state line is marked by a tiny sign on the shore, just barely visible in the photo below.

Our furthest point north, with Eagle Point and Lock and Dam 11 in the distance.

This guy was paddling around in the river on a surfboard. When our boat passed, he quick paddled over and rode the wake for a bit. It looked like it might be fun for a few moments, but probably not worth the effort.

The Dubuque-Wisconsin Bridge that carries Route 151 across the river.

The Dennis Ross, pushing two petroleum barges upstream.

Our pilot gave a running explanation of a lot of what we passed, including the details on the towboats we saw. He must have had a book handy in which he could look up the details. His delivery was so halting and dry, however, that it took a great deal of concentration to summon up the energy it took to listen to him.

The large brown mass in the tree with the split trunk is an active Bald Eagle nest. I spotted two eagles perched in riverside trees. I tried to point one of them out to a guy at the next table, but he only spoke German and replied with I don’t know what. I think I got my point across to him, but he didn’t seem overly impressed.

The Julien Dubuque Bridge that carries Route 20 across the river. It was opened in 1943 and painted gray to disguise it in case of enemy air attack. The towboat is the Aaron F. Barrett.

We sailed past Dubuque and headed south for a while. The riverbank here was less developed.

As we returned to Ice Harbor, from which we’d come an hour and a half earlier, we noticed two wedding parties on the levy having their photos taken. Here, and later when we walked along the river, we saw a total of five.

An assortment of small craft lined the entrance to Ice Harbor (so called because ice used to be harvested in the inlet).

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National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium

Posted on September 14, 2013 by Roger

On Saturday, we decided we were in the mood to do something. We made a whole day of it. We got up early and headed west. The place in Marengo where we planned on eating breakfast was closed, so we ended up at McDonald’s with everybody else in Marengo.

We arrived in Dubuque around 9:30, and spent the rest of the morning in the museum. It’s an eclectic place with displays on the river and its ecology, on floods that occurred locally, on the history of steamboats and commerce and boat building and industry. In the main building there are tanks full of the sort of wildlife that can be found in the river. Upstairs, there are tanks of turtles from around the world. In another building there are more tanks with salt water fish that don’t seem to have any connection to any river. There’s a Hall of Fame of people who are connected to the American rivers in some way. There’s just s little bit of everything. It’s all done well, and much of it is interesting.

Fish found in the Mississippi.

They also had an alligator and a tank of salt-water fish, supposedly because the river empties into the ocean. A Moray Eel was swimming about in the open and looking odd.

Steamboat history.

The photo on the right is of a diorama of the shipyard in Dubuque. The long, low brown building in the corner is the building I was standing in when I took this photo.

Mark Twain’s mirror and a transom glass from a steamboat.

A clam boat and a pleasure boat and buttons made from fresh-water clam shells. The clams weren’t good for anything else.

Here I’m learning what it would be like to live in a shell like a turtle. A turtle with a camera.

The National Rivers Hall of Fame.

This was kinda fun. You could push a button on this table and reproduce in miniature the flood that swamped Dubuque in 1965.

There was stuff outside too, like this old towboat.

And these engines that looked like googly eyes.

As soon as I put the chair in front of the Otter tank, one came over to investigate.

I don’t know if we learned a great deal, but we had fun just being away and looking at stuff.

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Heading Home

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Roger

I’ve had the sort of vacations from which I just wanted to escape. When it came time to go home, I drove as fast as I could, stopping as infrequently as possible, just to get it over with. This wasn’t one of those. We took our time and squeezed out every last drop of fun we could find.

On Monday afternoon, we stopped at Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. This mall has more vendors than any other mall in the United States and is the most visited mall in the world. That may be, but even though we were there on Labor Day, I parked within 50 yards of a door, and it didn’t seem very crowded.

We stayed for about two hours, bought ourselves a couple Jamba Juices (my first), a couple cookies, and a few other things — just to celebrate our visit to the Mecca of materialism — and wandered probably about a tenth of the total area.

The mall includes an amusement park, a miniature golf course, an aquarium, and who knows what all. We looked at, but didn’t pay to visit, any of these features.

It was late afternoon when we left. We made it as far as Black River Falls, Wisconsin and spent the night in a Comfort Suites (which was very nice and half the price of the Hampton Inn). In the morning, we skipped the complementary breakfast and drove to Wisconsin Dells for breakfast at Paul Bunyan’s Cook Shanty so my wife could get her favorite doughnuts.

And that was it. We couldn’t stretch the trip out any longer. We had to go to work the next day.

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Jamestown

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Roger

Jamestown, North Dakota bills itself as “The Buffalo City.” Their claim to this title is based on two attractions.

The World’s Largest Buffalo Statue
White buffalo

The statue was impossible to miss. Here it is from the Interstate.

And a close up from the side that gave me the proper angle on the sun.

There was a group of four young women by the statue who were taking dozens of photos of each other, none of which had anything to do with the buffalo but all of which were in my way. I walked back and forth trying to find a shot that didn’t include them while making snarky comments to my wife about how oblivious they were. Of course, one of them asked me to take a photo of the four of them. I agreed, then try to explain to them that they had to be facing into the sun or their faces would be in shadow. They questioned this at first, then moved into the wrong position, then finally got in place after one of them said, “He must know what he’s talking about. He has a really nice camera.” A couple minutes later, as we were leaving we had to wait for them to get out of the middle of the road where they were having a discussion on which way they wanted to walk.

The white buffalo were a bit trickier to find. They’re part of the herd belonging to the National Buffalo Museum (which we didn’t bother paying to see). We were in the area for several minutes before we spotted one as it walked up out of a swale.

We had been warned us that sometimes the white buffalo weren’t very white. That was decidedly the case on this day.

We hung around about 20 minutes, then headed east for home.

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Red Angus

Posted on September 1, 2013 by Roger

On Sunday night, our friends took us out to the cattle. We piled into a pickup and drove a mile or so outside “town.” We pulled through a gate into the pasture and pulled plastic buckets of oats out of the back.

As soon as we got out of the truck, about half the cows started our way.

I’m a city boy. I’m used to seeing cows on the other side of the fence. Having a huge animal heading my way with conviction was a little bit intimidating.

I stood my ground.

A neighbor graciously allowed me to photograph her sitting in the chair feeding the cows.

She got up after a minute or so. I was concentrating on the animals that were vying for the oats in my bucket and forgot about the chair. When I looked over, I saw this. I took several photos, but when I saw the chair start to tip over, I rushed in and rescued it.

Later, my friend said he was surprised I was willing to wade into the herd. I said it was a testimony to the faith I have in him. I figured he would let me know if I was about to die.

There wasn’t nearly enough in our buckets for all the cows, or even for those who came to see us. I asked about this and was told it’s just an excuse for farmers to get out with their animals and see how the herd is doing. Whatever the reason, I thought it was fun.

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Listing Through Life

Spirit of Dubuque

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