After leaving Memphis at sunset, we sailed through the night and for much of the next day for our visit to Greenville in Mississippi. I must admit that I had never heard of Greenville, although as we will discover it was the center of the Great Flood of 1927 and is actually Mississippi’s largest river port! The morning started with an interesting sunrise:
And before long we were settled into our normal routine of a delicious breakfast and then coffee in the Explorer’s Lounge watching for interesting river scenes. I was quickly rewarded with an even larger group of American White Pelicans on a sandbank as we sailed around one of the thousands of bends on this slow moving river!
The river traffic continued as before, but with a little headwind as we sailed south. This large barge passed by relatively closely because of the narrow navigable channel:
With the result that some pretty impressive waves came over the front of our boat as we travelled through the wake of those barges:
I included a photo in the introductory article to this series about the Viking Mississippi River cruise of an unlucky couple who were sitting watching the view just to the right of this photo!
Finally, in the early afternoon, we arrived at Greenville. Although perhaps not exactly where we had planned to be – the very low water levels on the Mississippi meant that the tributary that allowed access to Greenville was just impassable.
This is where the wrong decision of the day occurred! My wife had a hip replacement scheduled for our return after the cruise and so we were desperately trying to avoid crowds with the risk of infection that might have resulted in cancelling the operation. The main event for the day was a concert and barbeque by Steve Azar. Okay, I’m not much of a country music fan, but the concert sounded like a great event by a singer whose hometown is Greenville, but the crowded auditorium ruled that option out. Instead, I decided on the Greenville Highlights optional tour and headed out by coach to the town. I feel like the residents had really put their hearts into the event, but, to be honest, Greenville didn’t seem to have that many highlights. We had a talk first in the local library about the range of writers that had been associated with Greenville in the past:
We then visited the museum of the Great Flood of 1927, which I must admit was interesting and nicely put together.
And then we visited the small-town museum – again, the owner of this had spent a lifetime gathering things that had a connection to the town.
Finally, we walked across to the Methodist church and were given a potted history of that community. This was the main shopping street of Washington Avenue as we crossed (carefully) to get to the church.
The town museum had this version taken in 1963 – a little different!
And, unfortunately, that was it. We had no time to see the levee and the town port (which would have been interesting) as the boat was leaving around sunset again, and so back on the coach to rejoin our cruise.
Talking to a few other guests that evening, I gather that the concert and barbeque was fantastic…
And with that, we got ready to sail into the sunset to reach Vicksburg, another port town that was going to be inaccessible for our boat!
