One day while swiping up and down the Mississippi River on Google Maps I noticed something about Upper Mississippi River Lock & Dam 5A is different from all of the other Mississippi Locks & Dams. This is as good a reason as any for a visit.
There are twenty-something Locks & Dams on the upper Mississippi River. They create a chain of lakes which facilitates barging of goods up and down the river. Most were built in the late 1930s as a single project so they are all pretty similar, but the one in Winona is configured a little differently than the rest.
Here is an aerial image of Lock & Dam 5A; here are all the others: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, and 27. (Note that Lock & Dam 5A was not included in the original plan, hence the “A” suffix, and that Lock & Dam 23 was in the plan but was never built.)
The difference is in the position of the lock. Here it is out in the river channel, on an island, inaccessible by road. All of the other locks are on the riverbank. Seems like a minor difference at first, but when you think about things like maintenance and repairs and even the route the lock operators take to get to and from their office every day, this is not an insignificant detail.
Probably not coincidentally, it is also the only Mississippi Lock & Dam that has a helipad.
My original plan for visiting Winona was to spend some time poking around to figure out why it was built this way. It undoubtably increases costs and complicates operations to some degree. It wouldn’t have been designed this way without reason. Unfortunately there are no public facilities, no visitor center or anything, to give any background on why it is the way it is. I could only speculate as to why it was built this way. I settled for a fly-over and a photo. Beyond that all I could do was shrug my shoulders. “Gee whiz. Do they have to walk all the way across the dam to get to work in the morning?” I assume they do.
Primary objective foiled, I found some other things to do in Winona. I decided on a hike around Sugar Loaf Bluff followed by lunch and a bike ride along the riverfront levee to the Minnesota Marine Art Museum.
My first stop after landing in Winona, if you don’t count Kwik Trip to grab a snack, was at Sugar Loaf Bluff. This is a bluff a few hundred feet high with an accidentally manmade rock formation at the top. The trail to the top of the bluff is a manageable hike, never too steep, and mostly not too scary. There are a couple of spots where you’re really careful about your footwork, but you never feel like you’re cheating death.
Once I got to the top of the bluff I was presented with a view of Winona and the Mississippi that reminded me of the view of Duluth and the St. Louis River from Enger Park.
Sugar Loaf Bluff is something on the order of four hundred feet high. Sugar Loaf, the rock formation on top of the bluff, adds another eighty feet to that. There were lots of people climbing it. I was not prepared to climb–in terms of knowledge, equipment, or courage–but I can see the allure in it. Maybe I’ll return someday and give it a try.
I spent about an hour at the top of the bluff before heading back into town for lunch at Blooming Grounds Coffee. The ham & swiss wrap hit the spot and the cherry Italian soda was refreshing as always. I’ve developed a cherry Italian soda habit this summer. I don’t think I’d ever had an Italian soda prior to about two months ago.
After lunch I biked along the levee back toward the Minnesota Marine Art Museum and the airport. Along the way I passed by a small cluster of boathouses moored to the levee. I’ve heard of these before. They’re groups of people who live in makeshift floating houses on the Mississippi. Some of them migrate up and down the river as the seasons change.
I didn’t spend a lot of time at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum, but I was there long enough to learn two things.
Located across the main channel from downtown Winona, MN, the community on Latsch Island is the only legal, habitable boathouse community on the Mississippi River. Founded in the early 1970s, the number of boathouses has risen to about 120, and attracts people wishing to live an off-the-grid lifestyle.
The group of boathouses I’d seen on my way to the museum was most definitely not “located across the main channel from downtown Winona, MN.” Hence it did not fall into the “legal, habitable” category. This was not a surprise.
I also learned what “trompe-l’œil” means.
The painting employs trompe-l’œil [a painting technique used to create the effect of three-dimensionality] to achieve a lifelike depiction of the deity, accentuated by a gold turban adorned with red rubies, contrasting against a cloudy atmosphere and cerulean blue sky. Viewed from a three-quarters angle, the deity is illuminated by eastward light piercing through the water, defining its contours as it descends into the abyss, evoking mysterious and enigmatic qualities.
I did not learn how to pronounce “trompe-l’œil.”
What did I learn about flying?
Remember to look at your VFR Sectional (or the Chart Supplement) even if you’re flying IFR. There’s nothing on an IFR En Route chart to clue you in to nonstandard traffic patterns.
Somewhere shortly after La Crosse it hit me: Winona: airport in a river valley between high bluffs, fairly densely populated area on one side, specifies a calm wind runway. Calm wind runways often have something to do with noise abatement and are accompanied by right-hand traffic patterns to keep traffic on one side of the airport. Does Winona have a right-hand pattern?
I flipped over to my sectional. Sure enough, “RP30.” It does. I was lucky that I thought of this before I blindly flew a left pattern (because, you know, flying the designated traffic pattern is not optional.) This is not something that I’ve made a point of checking as part of my normal flight planning routine. It probably should be.
What else did I learn?
Winona is chock full of pretty young women. They’re everywhere. Remind me to move here if I ever turn twenty five years old again.
Note: I’m not sure this was actually real. It may have been power of suggestion. I was constantly aware that my second great childhood love was born in and named after this place. The latent twelve year old boy in me may have been seeing Winona Ryder everywhere.
Notes
- Cell: 4 bars AT&T
- Airport WiFi: None
- FBO/terminal locked and no restroom available outside of business hours.