Mississippi River Cruise 2016
We celebrated 50 years of marriage this year and decided to take a upper Mississippi riverboat cruise. We flew to St. Louis, MO and stayed the first night at the Hyatt Regency at the Arch. We boarded the boat the next morning and started cruising up the Mississippi River. Unfortunately for us he had been raining north of us and the river was rising. We went as far as Hannibal, MO and had to turn around as they were afraid the boat would get stuck between two bridge over crossings due to the height of the boat. We turned around and went back down river passed St. Louis and then up the Ohio River.
The first stop was in Paducah, KY and we took a city tour and then walked around. It is a great little town with a lot of history which is depicted by the murals on the river wall. In 1937 the Ohio rose to a point that it flooded 90% of the city of Paducah. The river crested at nearly 11 feet about the sidewalk where the murals are located. After the flood they build a 12 1/2 mile flood wall for protection from future floods.
We then stopped in Henderson, KY and took a tour through the Audubon Museum which was very interesting and worth the visit.
Our next stop was Louisville, where Betz and I started our married life. I was stationed at Fort Knox when we got married so we drove back from CA and took up residence in Shively a suburb of Louisville, KY. Betz got a job as a secretary at Brown Foreman Distillery and we stay there sixteen months. At first we lived in an apartment then moved to a small house.
While in Louisville we visited Churchill Downs and the Jim Beam Distillery, both of which were very interesting. I had been to Churchill Downs before but did not do a tour so this was new to me.
Since we were supposed to end up in Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN at the end of the cruise we made plans to visit friends so we flew from Louisville to Minneapolis. We were unable to meet up with our friends but did enjoy a nice quiet 50th anniversary dinner at Axel’s Grill in Mendota, MN.