This is the most exciting way to see the US Midwest

Times

27-04-2025

Main Streets, megafarms and small family-owned homesteads. Red barns, white picket fences and cornfields. Stars, stripes and Peanuts. Mark Twain, swing bridges and grain silos the size of cathedrals.
My voyage on the Upper Mississippi, sailing from St Louis in Missouri to Minneapolis and St Paul in Minnesota may be going against the river's flow yet it has a narrative arc of its own. A journey along the Mississippi feels as complex as America itself. It may not be the longest river in the US (the Missouri wins that prize) but every inch of its 2,350-mile length is packed with history, contradictions and beauty.
At the St Louis Art Museum, I spend the evening before joining my voyage in a state of reverie among a profusion of Van Goghs, a sprinkling of Renoirs and some rather nice Renaissance art (free; slam.org). The millionaires who bankrolled the 1904 World's Fair insisted that the St Louis Art Museum, housed in the middle of Forest Park, could never charge an entry fee.
'Am I safe to walk through the park in the evening?' I ask one of the museum staff as I leave around the start of twilight. 'Oh yes,' she says, and passing the picnics and wedding photoshoots that are taking place amid the park's boating ponds and tennis courts as I head northeast to my hotel, the Sonesta, a 20-minute stroll away, next to the park in the Central West End, I can understand why; this part of St Louis feels as gentle as a village.
Forest Park is significantly bigger than Central Park and is fringed by houses, with wide verandas and the sort of late 19th-century confidence that the Smith family exuded in Meet Me in St Louis. After a hard few decades, the city has become an increasingly popular place for people to bring up children. Businesses are relocating here and the downtown area — newly accessorised with restaurants and hip hotels — seems to be firmly on the up.
St Louis is known as the Gateway City, which does hint at a loss of identity even though the name makes sense. Below lies the Mississippi Delta; above it — and the area I'm exploring — is the Midwest. My cruise is called Heartland of America and it feels appropriate. The states through which the Upper Mississippi runs are America's breadbasket but also full of literary and cultural history.
Hannibal, founded in 1819 and one of our first stops, is fully Mark Twain-themed, from Becky Thatcher's Diner to Finn's Foods and Spirits. The author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer grew up here and there's a freshly painted fence outside his childhood home, which offers creaking floorboards and a full sense of context for his novels and journalism (£11; marktwainmuseum.org).
'Along the Upper Mississippi, every hour brings something new,' Twain wrote. 'There are crowds of odd islands, bluffs, prairies, hills, woods and villages — everything one could desire to amuse the children. Few people ever think of going there, however.'
But we are. The Viking Mississippi eschews the retro paddle steamer look for something sleeker. It has 193 cabins that are smart and surprisingly spacious-feeling — despite the constraints of having to fit through the Mississippi's lock system. They all have balconies with chairs and tables. In late August temperatures were in the 30s, but the cabin's air conditioning never faltered (as long as you closed the sliding door correctly).
The ship also has room for two restaurants; on the top deck, the River Café is more informal and has outdoor seating, while the Restaurant is quieter with an à la carte menu. There's also space for a large library area and outdoor terraces — the one aft, near the bar, has particularly nice rocking chairs. In the evening, the entertainment includes a thoughtful and tuneful look at the history of music in St Louis, talks about history and wildlife in the area and demonstrations of mint julep-making. As we head north, the menus reflect the region, with fish and steak of course, but also corn chowder and local cheeses.
'When we started, there were 30 small farms like us. Now there are just two,' says Ralph Krogmeier, who founded his farm Hinterland in 1978 and now runs it with his wife, Colleen (hinterlanddairy.com). Hinterland, surrounded by motion-picture perfect cornfields a thirty-minute drive from our stop in Burlington, Iowa, has survived because it now makes award-winning cheese and ice cream. 'Land was cheap then. It isn't now,' he adds.
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On hearing this, a small group of passengers nod in an understanding way before they lean over the railing to admire some of the Holstein and Jersey cows. They are dairy farmers from New Zealand who examine the corn-based winter feed that's grown in the surrounding fields with great interest. When I point out that this could be classed as a busman's holiday for them, they laugh. 'Makes it tax-deductible,' one says, with a farmer's directness and a smile.
Apart from the fact-finding Kiwi dairy farmers and me, everyone on the ship is American, as are the crew. The landscape feels properly American too, from the railroad tracks with the mournful whistles of trains heading through to the bald eagle I spot and the Victorian architecture of the smaller towns where we stop. As night falls, the ship's engines are quiet enough to be able to — just — pick out the sound of cicadas as we pass woodlands, grand riverbank houses and the occasional campsite.
The ship's swimming pool, a narrow strip at the stern, turns out to be really conducive to overhearing conversations. 'When I was teaching civics in high school, I always made sure a module on Agent Orange was on the curriculum,' I hear a woman on my left say as she discusses the Vietnam War with another passenger. On the other side, a man is telling his friends about coming across a bear and her cub while out hiking earlier in the year. 'I just tried to make as much noise as I could, and hoped that I wasn't between her and the cub,' he says.
If anywhere feels like the repository of American pride, hopes and dreams though, it's the John Deere Pavilion (deere.com) in Moline, Illinois. First, we look at the homes the Deeres built in Moline's leafy suburbs. Victorian edifices stuffed with Flemish tapestries and ceiling frescoes from Venice are interspersed with notices that the company refused to repossess farm equipment in the Depression and that John Deere once helped to break up a meeting of segregationists. In the Pavilion, however, it's full-throttle agricultural admiration, with museum-like reverence given to a boxed 1970s Barbie in John Deere clothing, early tractors polished to a sheen and — in pride of place — a corn-harvesting combine that costs £1.07 million. One of the passengers on this excursion brings out his phone to show a photo of his grandfather's 1931 John Deere tractor, which he's restored, and the other passengers cluster around admiringly.
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A stop at Dubuque means that we're just over an hour's coach ride from Taliesin, where America's most famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, lived. His grandparents had settled in this part of Wisconsin from Wales and he created a home and a college here, still with the plyboard desk from which he designed buildings such as Fallingwater and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The house and grounds are a delight to wander around and the gardens are a profusion of orchards, trees and shrubberies (tours from £27pp; taliesinpreservation.org).
Frank Lloyd Wright's home in Taliesin
ALAMY
Meanwhile, the ship's bridge team are making endless calculations on the swell of the river when it comes to navigating. 'Whenever you come back after a break, this feels like a completely new river,' says Cory Burke, who is piloting the ship.
Our journeys demonstrate how much effort goes into trying to tame the Mississippi. After a few days, I find my tribe on the rocking chairs at the fore of the ship. With wine and cocktails in hand, passengers are enthralled as the ship manoeuvres through locks and bridges. And we wave at the lock-keepers.
There turns out to be a lot of waving in the Upper Mississippi. When we head inland, the cornfields ripple just as they do in the movies, fields and fields of them; flat in Iowa, undulating hills in Wisconsin. But on the Mississippi itself, every time a jet ski or fishing boat comes alongside, as well as a passing lock-keeper, people wave. Sometimes I think, no, this is an effort for them, but every single time someone sees the ship, they wave.
We arrive in La Crosse, a cool little Wisconsin college town on the day Trump stages a rally there before the presidential election that will take place two months after my trip. The residents remain polite but the fourth-generation owner of Kroner's Hardware store is sporting a tie-dye T-shirt, while the baristas of the Root Note coffee shop are in a range of pro-choice and rainbow outfits. Meanwhile, makeshift stalls arrive with Trump memorabilia, including bright gold baseball caps and fake dollar bills with Trump's face. Back on board though, there's no talk of politics, which is an American civics lesson in itself. Instead, people chat and laugh with their fellow passengers and head on deck to admire the Mississippi in all its glory.
Sarah Turner was a guest of Viking, which has seven nights' full board from £5,295pp on a Heartland of America voyage, including flights, some excursions, tips and drinks with meals, departing on August 16, 2025 (vikingcruises.co.uk)