Greenville, MS (October 17)

We had a quiet night on the river and awoke to another stretch of rural countryside with no internet or cellphone service.

We turned off the Mississippi onto Lake Ferguson. It is a lake in name only since it connects with the river both above and below Greenville -  The navigable entrance is from the south.  Along the shore were several small shipyard facilities.

We went bow-in to the boat ramp. There appeared to be no place to tie up, however, crew members lifted a couple of hatches flush with the laundry surface, dug some dirt out of the uncovered pits and attached cables and then docking lines to the ringbolts hidden inside the pits. 

A member of the crew put down a colored rock at the water line. This is a quick visible indicator should the water level start to rise or fall. Later that day I learned the rocks name is Wilson, as in "Has anyone seen Wilson?" or "Is Wilson in position?"

Before lunch we walked with friends to the top of the amazingly large launching ramp and down the other side of the levee in the town.

The downtown section of Greenville was a sad place. There were many buildings and shops that had seen better days. There were very few active businesses. The business life of the community had moved out to State Route 82. 

We walked from the 200 block to the 400 block across a block and back to the waterfront. That was enough.

Note that I said we started at the 200 block. After walking down the boat ramp, as we approached AMERICA, we stopped to chat with a police officer.  He told us that the 100 block of the city had been destroyed in the great flood of 1927. The Army Corps of Engineers had built the levee on top of the debris. We were therefore standing on top of the 100 block.

The officer also told us that while the water level on the upper Mississippi was high, the level at Greenville was about normal. He said that they anticipated it getting higher as more water was released into the river upstream. He said they could always tell when the level was rising because the current passing by the boat ramp reversed itself, flowing South to North rather than its usual North to South. The water might rise as much as 20 feet or more.

After lunch we boarded a bus for a trip to Indianola to see the BB King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center.  

Things got off to the shaky start of an empty room presented as the cotton gin where he once worked and a walk to see his grave.  Entering the exhibits area, it suddenly to so much better that I had to hustle a bit to see the last part of it in the allocated hour. The way the presentation wove his life into the times in which he lived was exceptionally well done.  (I did not lose time taking pictures because photography inside the museum was not allowed.)

We returned to Greenville, reboarded the riverboat, and at 7:00 p.m. pulled away from the launching ramp and headed South back into the Mississippi with a red sunset along the western shore.