Mississippi Musings

On the first of this month, I took my dad and my grandson, Devin, up to Cape Girardeau for my dad's birthday.  After we did some shopping and had some lunch, we went down to the Mississippi River.  In downtown Cape, there is a historic area where they built a stone wall between the river itself and some train tracks.  On this stone wall, are pictures that were hand painted with different milestones throughout the midwest history.  Lewis and Clark murals, meeting with Native American tribes, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn type adventures with Samuel Clemens aka "Mark Twain". I was inspired to take some pictures and do a bit of blogging on it.  (I am still getting the hang of blogging, but I think I've made some progress!)  Here is the first picture, when we first pulled up to the tracks into the parking slots.

You can even see the mighty Mississippi, off to the left, with the all too familiar sight of a barge being pushed by a much smaller boat.

It was rather comical, me urging my 4 yr-old grandson, Devin, closer to the water's edge so that I could get a picture of him with the barge moving behind him.  He was pretty amazed at how that little white boat on the far left of the picture could push ALL that cargo AND keep the whole thing going in the direction it was supposed to go.  He told me, "MiMi? When I try to do that in the bathtub all my stuff just goes everywhere!"  Just precious....

Here's another one coming from the opposite direction.  As they pass each other, Devin is trying to pull the imaginary "18-wheeler horn" in hopes that it will work here too!  Unfortunately, I don't think the ships' captains were really paying attention.  Too bad!

I took some pictures of the wall when we first pulled up, as well as a longer one that gives you an idea of how much time and effort went into creating this work of art along the river.

Turning to my left, I took this one....

The level of detail that went into these murals is incredible and I know that my itty-bitty iphone camera did not even come close to capturing that.  What was really interesting is that after we went through the opening in the wall, we discovered that the other side of the wall, that faces the river, was also painted, but this time with the history of Cape Girardeau.  Again, another amazing site.

There's Devin, and my dad, David..the birthday boy!  They are facing the river, while my back is to the river to take their picture.  It was a beautiful day!

The last two shots are of my grandson posing!  He's so adorable!

So, this is how we spent our day, with family, fun, and the mighty Mississippi!