After leaving Branson we headed toward Lansing, Iowa with a
one-night stop over in Canton, Missouri.
We absolutely loved our night in Canton at the City of Canton
Mississippi River Park. This is a tiny
city park right at the edge of the river with 23 cement pads and full
hookups. They can all accommodate large
rigs. There are no amenities here but
for $20 a night what would you expect?
But there really are amenities.
There is the peacefulness of the river flowing just feet away from your
RV and it is located immediately outside Lock and Dam #20. Some would think this would be very loud but
it’s actually very quiet. Numerous
towboats with their barges went through in the few hours we were there. It seemed to take about an hour for them as
they all had to separate half of their barges to work their way through the
lock. It was so quiet you could hear
some of the crew talking among themselves on the front of the barges when
approaching the lock. There was an area
you could walk to right up by the lock to get a closer look. The noisy part was the train that was on our
back side – we were sandwiched between it and the river. At least the trains didn’t honk their horns
when they came by but I noticed that I woke up a bit each time one came through
at night although I went right back to sleep.
We never heard any river traffic at all while sleeping. We found this stop to be a special treat.
The following day we headed to Lansing and only about 45
minutes into the drive it started to rain and kept raining nearly the entire
trip. Until we got to the edge of the
storm, it was just rain and no wind. As
we passed through Oelwein going north the rain let up but both of us noticed
that it was quite windy yet we weren’t really feeling it in the motorhome, which
seemed odd. We then turned east and
almost immediately we were slammed from the rear with very strong wind that
started to unfurl our large awning. John
was able to pull onto the shoulder but when I opened the door to check the
awning, the door was nearly whipped out of my hand. I had all I could do to hang onto it with
both hands and get it closed. The awning
seemed to be in but I just held my finger on the “in” button hoping that would
work as we continued to get pounded by the wind. We could see a small town just a quarter mile
up the road so John very slowly crawled forward with the motorhome hoping to
find a wind break from some of the buildings, which he did. There was a long area to pull over just into
town. We have a vent on our roof that has
a big cover over it to protect it from damage and the wind had somehow sucked
that vent wide open as well and yet it didn’t pull that cover off it. We ordered awning clamps and installed them while
we were in Iowa. They should stop the
wind from pulling it out while driving.
We had a great visit with Maggie’s son, Chad while in
Lansing, IA. Besides visiting and
playing games, we took some road trips to see the area. Lansing is right on the Mississippi River so
we drove along it through La Crosse, WI to head to Rochester, MN – Maggie’s
hometown. Chad was born there but never
lived there so we were able to show him all the places his Mom lived and went
to schoo
l. The city has changed a lot since we were last here, especially the Mayo Clinic. There are so many more large buildings there now that are all part of the Mayo complex. We wondered what is in all of them.
We also took a road trip to Wabasha, MN. This beautiful small town is only 45 miles
from Rochester and also right on the Mississippi. While growing up, Maggie’s family had a
houseboat and ski boat that they kept at a marina in Wabash and spent many
weekends anchored on sand beaches along the river there. The town has changed quite a bit. There are beautiful homes built right along
the river and the old downtown has been kept up very nicely. After checking out the town we headed across
the river to the Wisconsin side and followed it down where we could cross back
into Winona, MN. There were several
small river towns along the way and the town of Alma was really quaint and kept
up. In Winona we stopped to eat at the
Ground Round so Maggie could get some batter fried walleye. She couldn’t come this far north and not eat
walleye. This is not a fish we can find
in Oklahoma. Then we drove back down to
Lansing along the river. The Mississippi
is really beautiful this far north. It’s
expansive with acres and acres of backwater which I’m sure is great for fishing. John was dreaming of having a airboat to
cruise around all those backwaters in.
Back in Lansing John found a veteran’s park on top of a large bluff that
overlooks the Mississippi. You could see
for miles. One thing we noticed while up
north was the wonderful, green, soft grass.
Everybody keeps their yards mowed, even in the country where the yards
are extremely large. They mow it all and
it is so pretty to look at while driving.
John said he could easily spend summers here. 
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