Great River Road Ride

[hunts4beer]

We just completed riding the Great River Road along the Mississippi River from La Crosse, Wisconsin to Memphis, Tennessee. We followed the river down the west side and returned following the river's east side. All said we rode about 1900 miles and visited 9 of the 10 states that border the mighty Mississippi over 7 days with 2 days spent seeing the sights in Memphis. Our longest ride was a couple of 400 mile days.

Besides the beautiful scenery that abounds on both sides of the river we enjoyed stops in many of the little (and big) river towns along the way. We found it interesting how much the cultures change as you head south. This trip was a dream of my wifes ever since she watched Feasting on Asphalt - The River Run on the Food Network. She even bought the book to make sure we hit a few of the host's (Alton Brown) favorite river stops.

If you decide to make this ride I stongly recommend using a GPS that will allow you to preload routes as the roads change often if you truly want to follow the river as close as you can. I used a Garmin product that allowed me to create the routes on my PC and then load them into the GPS.

 

Happy Trails!

Edited August 8, 2009 by hunts4beer

[juggler]

Wow, another great ride.

 

The Great River Road is a fun ride. We've done it from St. Paul, MN to Keokuk, IA and back. We did a similar thing hugging the river most of the way. The bike vibration killed the GPS part way through the trip and then later the vibration killed my laptop. That was a bad trip for some of my electronics.

 

We loved hitting the small little towns and we stopped at most of the lock and dams to look around and take photos. If you rode through Holy Cross, IA you saw some wonderful roads and views.

 

Glad you had a great trip.