So, approximately one hundred and fifty years ago some trains took
a few people from the city of Chicago to Rock Island where everybody
boarded a bunch of steamboats which paddled their way up to St. Paul
(or Pig's Eye, I forget when that changed). Apparently when they
made it to their destination they were greeted by no one, since
there was some confusion about their arrival time.
So, for lack of anything better to do a bunch of people decided they'd
recreate the trip to a degree. Rather than serially do a train ride
and a boat ride, it was decided to do them in parallel from the Quad
Cities (which includes Rock Island and 4 other cities) to St. Paul,
with the train making it all the way to Minneapolis. To round out the
whole experience the Taste of Minnesota was moved to Harriet Island
Park (which hasn't been an island for around 50 years) so that there
would be even more things going on. The Taste of Minnesota is itself
a carnival of markups, starting with the ticket system of purchasing.
Much like tokens at an arcade the tokens are the only accepted form of
payment at the fair, save for the booths where you can exchange five
dollars American for 8 tickets. At these booths it is made quite
clear that for each set of 8 tickets sold $1 is put towards the
running of the festival, giving each ticket a supposed value of fifty
cents. Since the tickets are used in place of normal currency,
however, the prices do not really reflect what you would normally pay,
even with your normal fair booth markups. A can of soda was selling
for 5 tickets, which is a significant markup over the four to six bits
one would normally pay for the same product. And if you were silly
enough to crave alcohol you would have to first convert one dollar
American into a wrist strap which proved your ability to legally
imbibe alcohol.
And all of that is neglecting the surprising effort it took to
actually locate any reasonable amount of food vendors.
Now, having provided a little background into the events, I should
recount how my weekend's activities intersected with them. On
Saturday the third of June the flotilla of the Grand Excursion was
scheduled to appear at around two-thirty to two-forty-five. Having
been informed of this, my brother and I boarded a bus to downtown St.
Paul. Due to some confusion about the location of the end of the line
we had to add a few blocks to the walking leg of our trip, but it was
not terribly inconvenient. After crossing the river to Harriet Island
and the aforementioned troubles in acquiring food we wandered
downstream closer to the main welcome of the Grand Flotilla. We
settled on a location near the downstream leg of world-record-sized
balloon arch, which rid itself of several balloons in the time we were
there.
Prior to the arrival of the Flotilla the St. Paul Yacht Club paraded
their vessels in front of the have-nots and were nearly sucessful in
keeping a constant speed and inter-boat distance throughout their
procession. After the various boats in various states of (dis-)repair
had proceeded by the way was cleared for the arrival of the actual
flotilla. The flotilla consisted of steam and faux-steam boats in a
three to seven ratio. Most of the faux-steam boats had vestigial
paddlewheels which turned pointlessly in the water as the boats
propelled themselves by hidden screws, although one boat was
unfortunate enough to ride high on the water without its pointless
wheel touching the water. Two of the faux-steam boats were completely
without paddle, one even completely without propulsion, having to be
pushed by a small tug. The actual steamboats were, in contrast,
rather impressive. Two of the vessels were so tall that they required
collapsable smokestacks to make it under Lafayette bridge (which
actually carries Interstate 94). All of the steam boats favored the
waiting crowds with a short song on their calliope. Particularly
impressive was when the Delta Queen rotated itself one hundred-eighty
degrees before docking on the northern shore of the river (more metal
pilings than shore, actually). As the boats were arriving rain also
begain to arrive, at first rather lightly, but by the arrival of the
final boat the precipitation was rather intense. The final boat in
question was the Mississippi Queen, which had trailed far behind the
rest of the flotilla form most of the journey to wait for the river
waters to recede far enough to make it under some of the bridges along
the route. Since we lacked foul-weather gear we decided to call it a
day and not wait for the possible arrival of the Milwaukee 261-led Grand
Excursion train, the schedule of which we were unsure of anyway.
On the ride back we boarded the same bus line which had brought us to
downtown, but this busdriver was unsure of the day's detour around the
sports festival at Como Park and we therefor waited about fifteen
minutes for the busdriver to call back to dispach and figure his
route. After that the driver attempted (and failed) to perform a
U-turn and eventually we made it back to our respective residences.
On Sunday, the fourth of July I was awoken by a telephone call from my
brother informing me that excursion train was stationed approximately
half a doxen blocks north of his residence. Previously I had known
only that the train in question would be somewhere near Harriet Island
from around noon to four in the afternoon, and that the day's trip
would return to its origin of the day. With this knowledge I decided
it would be best to wait until the train could be expected to return,
replacing my original plan of yet another bus ride to downtown St.
Paul. This way I would not need to rush myself to view the train
before it went out for the day and when I did go out the sun would be
lower in the sky.
Unfortunately for me, I had presumed that the train would take a
scenic rather than direct route to and from Harriet Island, so I
miscalculated when to arrive at the junction where the trains had
loaded in the morning. Arriving around five-thirty I found that the
passengers had already disembarked and Milwaukee 261 had moved inside
a locomotive shed where it was apparently being tended to. I took
some pictures of the train it its slightly broken-up state, and the
crew of the amtrak diesels with the train were busy re-arranging some
of the cars.
After this I went to my brother's and found that he had gone to see
the train in the morning and took several pictures. At this point I
found out that the picture I had hoped to take of the Milwaukee Road
261 with the Canadian Pacific 2816 ahead of it and two AMD-103s
shortly behind, would have been impossible to take anyway, since the
Canadian Pacific locomotive was not with the train at this point,
and the Amtrak diesels had been moved behind the Skytop lounge to
provide a push-pull configuration. I feel a bit sorry for the
unfortunate individuals in the skytop lounge who paid extra for the
priviledge only to have their view blocked by the cab of a diesel
locomotive.
Shortly before dusk, my brother and I went down to St. Anthony Main to
find a good spot to watch the fireworks display. At St. Anthony Main
we found two of my brother's ex-roommates and with their group we all
went as close to the Central Avenue bridge as the police would allow
and watched the fireworks. It turned out to be a rather good location
as the fireworks were launched from just slightly downstream of the
bridge. After a shooting some pictures of the fireworks my camera's
battery gave out, having not given notice before I went out earlier.
