Along the Great River Road – to the Twin Cities

Our first few days on the Great River Road have been… soggy. It was one solid week of rain up in Minnesota. Every day. 

We're on a 34-day Fantasy RV Tour of the Mississippi River, tracing it from its trickling start in Northern Minnesota, down to the Gulf. And during that first week, we only had a few hours of respite. It rained every day.

We only had one campfire THE ENTIRE FIRST WEEK. It was just too wet and miserable to have more. That was Sunday night up in Bemidji, the best weather day of the week, when a beautiful moon rose behind us during a short period of clear skies.

However, over the following four days, it appeared that our Mississippi River journey would not only experience rain, but also fog.

But the tour must go on, and despite the gloomy weather, we had a surprisingly fun day touring at our first stop – the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

We first visited Minnehaha Falls, of the Hiawatha poem fame. And there, we learned, the rain was a good thing. The falls had plenty of water. Normally, at this time of the year, it's just a trickle.

And we visited the magnificent Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul, the second biggest cathedral in the U.S. (St. Patrick's in New York City is a bit larger).

Most of the rest of the day, except for lunch, we stayed dry on the bus, driving around town, learning about its history from a guide and then being entertained by a gangster impersonator who climbed aboard to tell us sordid tales of crime in the 1930s when St. Paul was known as the most corrupt town in the nation.

But the weather broke just as we boarded the riverboat Betsey Northrup for a lunch cruise, and what a day it turned out to be. Finally. The rainy streak was over. Blue skies stretched overhead with big, beautiful, fluffy clouds drifting lazily across them. As we pulled away from the St. Paul skyline, the city gradually gave way to mostly wooded shoreline—quiet and green and timeless.

Bald eagles perched high in the trees along the banks, watching us glide by like silent sentinels. There's something about seeing those magnificent birds in the wild that just stops you in your tracks, makes you remember what this river meant long before any of us were here.

The river itself in that stretch is all part of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, protected and managed by the National Park Service. You could feel it, too. There was a sense of preservation here, of wildness kept intact, even though it was so close to two metropolitan areas.

For those few hours on the water, with the eagles overhead and the forest sliding by, you could almost imagine what it must have been like centuries ago, when this river was the highway through an untamed wilderness

St. Paul and Minneapolis are right next to each other – the Twin Cities – but they've got totally different personalities. St. Paul is the older, quieter sibling. It's got this historic, almost reserved charm with its beautiful old buildings and winding streets that follow the river's natural curves. It feels more traditional, more rooted in its river town heritage.

Minneapolis, on the other hand, is the energetic one—more modern, more bustling, with that downtown skyline full of glass and steel. It's got more of that big city vibe, more corporate headquarters, more hustle. Lots of apartments downtown.

But here's what really sets Minneapolis apart: St. Anthony Falls. It's the only major waterfall on the entire Mississippi River, and it's the reason Minneapolis even exists in the first place. Back in the 1800s, that falling water meant power—waterpower for sawmills and flour mills. The city literally grew up around harnessing those falls, and it became the flour milling capital of the world for a time.

These days the falls are mostly contained by locks and dams, but you can still see them and feel that raw power that built a city. It's wild to think that this one geological feature—this interruption in the river's flow—determined where a major American city would rise up.

You can see the Twin Cities on our cruise at the tail end of the video we did on our first week of the tour below.

If you missed the first in this series

• The Great River Road: An Inauspicious Start to An Epic RV Adventure

Two Fantasy RV Tours to Check Out

There are two Fantasy RV Tours that' we'll be doing in 2026 and 2027 that might interest you.

One is their 13 Day Made In America Music Tour that starts in Branson, MO, and ends in Nashville, TN. Apr 26 – May 08, 2026. Get your toes to tappin’ on our Made in America Music guided RV tour that visits the music meccas of Nashville, Memphis, and Branson. Visit Elvis Presley’s Graceland, historic Sun Studio, and the Grand Ole Opry.

And the other is their 34 Day Western National Parks Tour that starts in Virgin, UT and ends at the Grand Canyon Village, AZ. Sep 11 – Oct 14, 2027. Explore seven national parks: the Grand Canyon, Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Mesa Verde, and Zion, plus Antelope Slot Canyon and Monument Valley. Witness fascinating geologic formations and historic sites in the Grand Circle.