On the River: We are experiencing low water conditions on the Mighty Mississippi, enough so that I’m told we are blowing off a stop in Memphis and perhaps substituting one in Tunica, MS which is just south of Memphis. There is certainly some dry bank showing in many places, and a few gigantic sand bars too.
If we stop in Tunica it will be our second, or perhaps third visit. Tunica represents a successful effort to exploit a loophole in MS laws forbidding gambling on land. If it can be shown to be gambling on water, however shallow, supposedly that is not unlawful. The law existed at the behest of showboats which plied the river and provided entertainment, including gambling, at various stops along the way.
At Tunica they cut a small canal from the river to some flat farmland, built hotels on the farmland and in adjacent acreage built “floating” casinos with maybe a foot of river water underneath them. You cross a barely noticeable ‘bridge’ from hotel to casino. The hotel on land holds everything except the actual gambling equipment - parking, lodging, restaurants, gift shops, RV camps are all “ashore.”
The first time we visited we showed up in our fifth wheel trailer and pickup truck. We intended to stay a day or so, but one of us got the flu and was miserable, so we stayed longer. Then the other came down with it, hard not to do in the confined space of an RV.
We were there for close to two miserable weeks. One of the casinos had a special on prime rib for $9.99 and we ate it for several days running, got tired of it, but everything else on the menu was more so … we kept eating prime rib while recuperating. The Great Tunica Prime Rib Pig-Out is how we remember it.
By the time we got well enough to travel we had lost a week out of our schedule. We had to blow off the planned extension to eastern TN to see friends so we headed west through AR. Life is like that.
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Here on the lower Big Muddy, there are essentially no houses along the banks, just mile after mile of trees choking both banks. On the upper river there are fine homes, and weekend cottages lining the banks but not here. I think nobody builds on the banks here because of intermittent flooding and I suspect the levees controlling it are a fair ways behind the trees I see from the ship.
They say the river this far south is polluted, and it may be exactly that. One thing is clear, the pollution isn’t harming the trees which look healthy and lush. I suspect these are varieties which tolerate having their roots underwater some part of the year, not all trees will survive that.
Here and there I see some sort of commercial activity on the bank, maybe a conveyer to load some bulk product into barges, all of these rusty as anything. But they are probably miles apart.
Much of this part of the river has banks that look like no human had done much of anything nearby. On the river by contrast, the commercial barge traffic is nearly constant. And where it isn’t moving, there are barges tied up, effectively “parked” until someone needs them. As I write this we are passing a group of 17 barges being pushed downriver by a ‘tow’ boat. And it was passing another string going the other way - the river is wide here, and deep too, I’d judge.
Trivia item: There are no locks on the lower Mississippi, this is helpful for barge traffic because I’m thinking that 17 (4+4+3+3+3) barge string would have to be broken up and locked through in subgroups.
