The view from Pikes Peak... Pikes Peak, Iowa.

The day before yesterday, roaming around the Driftless Area, we stopped at Pikes Peak State Park — "a 500-foot (150 m) bluff overlooking the Upper Mississippi River opposite the confluence of the Wisconsin River."

Like the more famous Pikes Peak in Colorado, it is named after Zebulon Pike. 

Here's a slightly more southward view. The bluff on the opposite shore is Wyalusing State Park, where we camped Sunday night:

We hiked on the Bridal Veil Trail...

This is yesterday's sunrise — October 23rd, at 7:33 and 7:36 — from a vantage point in La Crescent, Minnesota, looking out at La Crosse, Wisconsin, over the Mississippi River.

My phone company had me in "low data" mode, so I couldn't post at the end of the day, in my usual fashion. But we're home now, and I hope putting these 2 pictures here, they'll have some continuity with yesterday, and I'll have today's sunrise at the end of today, in the familiar location. We spent yesterday roaming around the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa, so I have a few extra pictures to show you, but right now, what I want to do is move on to all the exciting Monday morning news, so stand by for normal blogging.

"Kitten caused multi-car crashes on Mississippi River bridge...."

"... police say."

No, drivers not leaving enough space between the cars caused the crashes.

"Unless the rapidly disappearing wetlands are made healthy again, restoring the natural defense, New Orleans will soon lay naked against the sea...."

"So, how does one reengineer the entire Mississippi River delta—one of the largest in the world—on which New Orleans lies?"

Three international engineering and design teams have reached a startling answer: leave the mouth of the Mississippi River to die. Let the badly failing wetlands there completely wither away, becoming open water, so that the upper parts of the delta closer to the city can be saved...,

Scientists worldwide agree that the delta’s wetlands disintegrated because we humans built long levees—high, continuous ridges of earth covered by grass or rocks—along the entire length of the lower Mississippi River... [that] prevented regular floods from harming farms, industries and towns along the river’s course... [but] would have supplied the brackish marshes with massive quantities of silt and freshwater, which are necessary for their survival....

"Trying to understand the waterways of America..."

Yesterday, we were driving on I-55 I-270...



IN THE COMMENTS: Scott M says:

The mountain whose foot is bathed by water.

Trempealeau Mountain (in Wisconsin's Perrot Park, on the Mississippi River). I can't find this information through Google, but according to the signs that I should have photographed, the Indians believed this mountain had been moved from the shore out to this place. See how oddly carved off it looks? It is a unique geological feature on the Mississippi River, used as a landmark in navigation, I think, because it's an island that is taller than the surrounding bluffs. I couldn't get a better picture, because, though we were on a high bluff — Brady Bluff — there was vegetation blocking part of the water that rings the mountain, and it was also pretty hazy. Anyway, it's a mountain whose foot is bathed by water and whose grandeur is not conveyed by my photograph.

At the Sunset Café...

... you can speak with subtlety....



... or intensity....



(2 stages of the same sunset, viewed from a jetty on the Mississippi River, in Pepin, Wisconsin — which is where the Little House on the Prairie was.)

At the Mississippi Sunset...

Last night, somewhere south of La Crosse.

At the Overlook Café...

... you don't have to pay attention to anything you don't want.



(Pictures taken yesterday in Wyalusing State Park, in Wisconsin, from cliffs above the Mississippi River. That's Iowa on the other side.)

At the Nightfall-on-the-Mississippi Café...

... keep it rolling.

Sunset on the Mississippi.

... in in Rock Island, Illinois, tonight.

Do you think we can drive straight through from Denver to Madison?

If you don't start until 1 p.m.... which is 2 p.m. in Madison? It's about 1000 miles. Oh, how can we stop at some motel in Nebraska or Iowa when we've got 2 drivers and we can take turns snoozing in the passenger seat? Even with the vision-blurring lightning storm between Des Moines and Dubuque, we're going to keep going. Crossing the Mississippi, we're almost home. It's familiar territory. Familiar names — Mineral Point, Mount Horeb, Verona — make the final hour serene. Add to that the dawn...

... and we rolled into town at 6 a.m. — a good time for a long nap, in our own bed, in our own house, for the first time as husband and wife.