Following the Mississippi River

A fall colors drive is a classic way to mark the arrival of autumn, and one gorgeous route dances with the Mississippi River for around 3,000 miles.

The scenic and sometimes twisty, slow-going Great River Road is not about clocking as many miles per day as possible. It's much better to meander through the 10 states – Minnesota to Louisiana – that are a part of this National Scenic Byway and All-American Road.

The waterway known as "The Big Muddy" ends at the Gulf of Mexico but is only 20 to 30 feet wide at its beginning, 125 miles northwest of Minneapolis in Itasca State Park.

What a humbling and bucket-list moment, for me, to meet the shallow headwaters. Everybody seems to linger, taking off shoes and simply standing in wet, stony muck, or walking on a flattened log that bridges the stream. A row of slippery rocks shows canoeists where the portage between Itasca Lake and Mississippi River begins.

The Federal Highway Administration recommends six to 10 days to get good mileage out of a Great River Road experience. Breaking up the drive with overnights in the biggest riverside metro areas – Minneapolis-St. Paul, St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans – is a typical way to proceed.

Cities of a much more modest size are worth an overnight too. For example:

Love and respect for Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, runs deep in Hannibal, Missouri. His boyhood home is open for tours. Add seasonal cave tours, riverboat cruises, trolley rides, a family-friendly museum and theatrical Twain impersonators. The population is 17,106.

Clarksdale, Mississippi is both scruffy in appearance and rich in music heritage. Muddy Waters, Ike Turner, John Lee Hooker, Sam Cooke and other music pioneers grew up here. Delta Blues Museum documents it all and musicians perform seven nights a week. The population here is 14,747.

Natchez National Historic Park, also in Mississippi, focuses on cotton culture, from the mansion of a plantation owner to Forks of the Road slave buying. The city and its Civil War landmarks are part of the 444-mile Natchez Trace Parkway, a national scenic trail. The population is 14,202.

Hundreds of additional river towns are lesser known yet enriching and unique.

I've driven the Great River Road in search of what's special about the smallest of places. Here's a north-to-south sampling of memorable and diverse discoveries. All destinations are under 10,000 in population; six are under 1,000.

An anchor for Wabasha, Minnesota is the nonprofit National Eagle Center, where permanently injured raptors live. Watch for soaring eagles outside too; the structure faces the river, a prime food source for the birds. Nearby Turning Waters is a bed and breakfast inn with brewery and taproom in a converted garage. Broken Paddle Guiding leads kayaking tours on Mississippi backwaters.

A big surprise in little Alma, Wisconsin is the nonprofit Castlerock Museum, a professionally curated collection of ancient European arms and armor. Artifacts are the lifelong collection of a retired judge. Think helmets, war hammers, battle crowns, a sword from 1096, a gun shield for King Henry VIII, a Roman dagger that is 2,000 years old. Also check out blufftop views at Buena Vista Park and the tasting room/patio of Danzinger Winery.

Pride of Cassville is one of the few seasonal car ferries that still cross the Mississippi. A ride between tiny Cassville, Wisconsin and the rural Turkey River boat landing in Iowa takes 17 minutes. Some customers come for a quick roundtrip ride, boarding without a vehicle. Others "loop the loop" from ferry to road to bridge (as close as Dubuque, 35 miles south).

On a bluff that is 15 miles south of the boat landing is Iowa's oldest-operating restaurant, Breitbach's Country Dining, Balltown. Open since 1852, the family's sixth generation serves long-simmering soups, deep-fried catfish and sugar-crust pies, primarily on weekends.

Beer lovers find Potosi, in the southwest corner of Wisconsin, because of the American Breweriana Association's National Brewery Museum. The beer museum, a transportation museum and one of several Great River Road interpretive centers are in four-story, 1852 Potosi Brewing Co. Add a brewery tour (by appointment) and brewpub lunch (from a suds-centric menu of beer bread and beer cheese soup to ale-braised pork and IPA barbecue sauce).

Boutiques and restaurants fill Main Street in the once-poor mining town of Galena, Illinois where 85% of buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places. President Ulysses S. Grant was at home here. So was the nation's largest contingent of lead-sulfide miners during the 19th century. It's worth getting sidetracked in artisan-rich countryside too.

A bright white temple, on the tallest vista in Nauvoo, Illinois, is a significant point of pilgrimage for Mormons, who fled here in the 1830s to escape religious persecution, then were harassed into abandoning the area. Only Latter-Day Saints members are allowed inside the temple, but all can roam the lush gardens and campus of 30-some historic buildings.

Near Grafton, Illinois, where the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers meet, are the stone cottages and sturdy lodge with 50-foot-tall stone fireplace at Pere Marquette State Park, open since 1940 and built by the Civilian Conservation Corps. The 8,000-acre park is a magnet for migratory birds.

For the best views (on a clear day) of where the Mississippi and Missouri rivers converge, take a ride up Lewis and Clark Confluence Tower, near Hartford, Illinois. Walking up 262 steps is another option. On three observation decks (50, 100 and 150 feet above ground) are stories about river history, life and industry.

Ste. Genevieve, founded by French fur traders, is Missouri's oldest community and named after the patron saint of Paris. Historic preservation is a priority, some speak "Missouri French" and lodging options are in 200-year-old buildings. The Fourth Friday Art Walk, featuring regional artists, is February through November.

Granite statues of 20 "Popeye" cartoon characters draw visitors to Chester, Illinois which is home to the comic strip's creator. Native son Elzie Crisler Segar based his characters on local people. Cartoon murals and Spinach Can Collectibles, a museum with souvenirs, deepen the theme.

Timing is everything at Jones Bar-B-Q, Marianna, Arkansas, where the sale of slow-roasted pork barbecue (topped with cole slaw, on Wonder Bread) begins at 7 a.m. and continues until the meat runs out. Nothing else is on the menu at this humble, two-table barbecue joint, which food historians say is the nation's oldest owned by a Black family. It was the first James Beard Foundation award winner in Arkansas.

Delta Cultural Center, Helena, Arkansas, is home to King Biscuit Time, the world's longest-running blues show. Broadcasts by KFFA-AM began in 1941; watch the live airing for free, around noon on weekdays. Add a Delta Sounds radio show broadcast from 1-1:30 p.m. Friday. There is no auditorium or ticket; expect to stand instead of sit.

The World War II Japanese American Internment Museum, McGehee, Arkansas, explains the former relocation center where 8,000 people were detained and under guard from 1942-45. Actor George Takei was a child when he and his family were interned at the 500-acre camp. Memorials are about all that remain, structurally, at this National Historic Landmark.

In the Deep South is no shortage of genteel plantation tours, but Whitney Plantation, Wallace, Louisiana, examines life from the slave's perspective. Onsite are seven slave cabins, statues of slave children, a Wall of Honor that lists the enslaved and the Field of Angels, dedicated to 2,200 slave children killed by fire. First-person stories of slaves, hundreds of them, are another anchor.

Experience Mississippi River is an excellent resource for planning where to stop for a meal, day or more while roaming the Great River Road, and it's easy to get sidetracked from this route to another.

The Trail of Tears National Historic Trail weaves through nine states and marks the forced walk of relocation for 46,000 Native Americans in the 1830s. Overlaps with the Great River Road include Trail of Tears State Park, near Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and Columbus-Belmont State Park, Columbus, Kentucky.

Other tempting segues: U.S. Civil Rights Trail (whose 130 sites in 15 southern states include the National Civil Rights Museum and Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis) and American Music Triangle (one-third of the 1,500 miles of monuments and attractions are along U.S. 61, between Memphis and New Orleans).