Highest Mississippi Crossing – 2004 Horace Wilkinson Bridge

In 2003 I started tracking our Mississippi river crossings. In 2006 our website became a blog and eventually a big portion became related to our road trips. This post’s main purpose is in order to create a pin on the Mississippi River Crossings map. This post has been in draft status for years, I am pre-dating the post to the date we made the crossing so that it sorts correctly on the blog.

In December of 2004 we took an old fashioned family roadtrip in our 1994 red Suburban (truckster) to visit family in Tampa. Along for the ride was our Great Nephew Travis and our aged dog ‘Old Dan’.

I honestly do not remember either the eastbound or the return crossings of the Mississippi but on the trip out we were rushing and towing a trailer full of furniture, so it was I-10 all the way

On the return, we were taking the US 90, the ‘red road’, enjoyin the touristy stuff along the gulf coast, both Travis and ‘Old Dan’ were GREAT traveling buddies. We ended up getting lost on the gulf coast in Mississippi and after we managed to struggle our way out of the swamp, we found ourselves back in Slidell at the I-10 freeway. So again, there is no doubt in my mind that it was back on the I-10 across the Mississippi.

The I-10 Mississippi Bridge

Of the large truss bridges over the lower Mississippi, the Interstate Highway I-10 Horace Wilkinson Bridge is the biggest of the big. It rises 175 feet above the water, making it the highest of any Mississippi River bridge, at least measured over the navigation channel (side spans of the Smith Avenue High Bridge in Saint Paul are taller, but its center span is 10 feet lower than the I-10 structure). The Wilkinson Bridge is 14,150 feet long overall, which is more than 2-1/2 miles. The truss superstructure is 4,550 feet long, and features a 1,235-foot clear channel span. The traffic deck carries six lanes of freeway traffic, seeing an average of 90,000 vehicles per day. – Bridge info from John Weeks’ Bridges of the Mississippi River

READ MORE at JohnWeeks.com

FlashBack

I found one post with a story about the 2004 road trip that Leilani wrote in 2007

Not sure why or how I got to looking for the pictures of the Jefferson Davis Home. Well I actually do know why and how I got side-tracked, I was looking for one of my friends writings so I could post it, when I came across the enlarged picture of the breakfast set that Varina Davis, Jefferson’s wife painted. I wanted to send it to my Auntie Em. I took that picture READ MORE . .  .

– This post is pinned on our Mississippi River Crossings Map LINK