Saturday, August 25th - Mud Island

After breakfast, we drove over to downtown Memphis, parked the Jeep and took the tramway over to Mud Island. Originally a sandbar that was threatening to block river access to Memphis, it has been developed into a beautiful historical and geographical park.

We walked thru the Mississippi River Museum. This pic is of model of a "showboat" barge being propelled by a tug boat. The showboats would visit the towns along the river and put on entertainment productions inside the barge.

Later, I walked the length of the "Riverwalk", a representation of the Mississippi River from Cairo, Illinois to where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico at Head of Passes, Louisiana. It is about five blocks long and graphically contours the various depths and heights of the river, sandbars, channels, levies, etc.

This pic shows the part of the Riverwalk representing the area of West Memphis, Arkansas, where we are currently camped. The gray area is the city of West Memphis, complete with major streets. We are camped above the gray area, inside the levee, along the bank of the channel of the river. We actually see the sandbar on the opposite side because the river is SO low now. As I mentioned in previous posts, the barges, small to VERY large in number, pass just in front of our campsite.