Hearing the name Mud Island might give you an impression of a place that is muddy and icky. However, before you have any misconceptions about the place, Mud Island is actually a small peninsula surrounded by the infamous Mississippi River and the Wolf Harbour. In fact, Mud Island is not even actually an island! Accessible by the Memphis Suspension Railway, by foot, by ferry, or by charter bus, this place is home to a museum, an amphitheater and a multitude of restaurants.
One of the most popular place to visit on Mud Island is the Mississippi River Park & Museum. At the park, you can enjoy the outdoors on bike trails, pedal boats and rafts. There is even a hydraulic scale model of the lower Mississippi River called the River Walk at the park where you can experience the history and facts about the river, even down to the major cities and small towns marked in this scale model. The River Walk is one of the most unique representations of the Mississippi River in the world. This journey ends at the Gulf of Mexico, which is actually a one-acre enclosure that holds 1.3 million gallons of water. Here is where you can enjoy your pedal boat rides as you enjoy the beautiful Memphis skyline on the background.
At the Mississippi River Museum, you can learn more about the history of the river’s lower valley. The main attraction here is the steamboat which is an exact scaled down replica of your typical steamboat found cruising along the Mississippi in history. There is also 18 galleries at the museum that showcases the long 10,000 years of Lower Mississippi River history. There are more than 5,000 artifacts here and you can even explore the two full size replicas of the boats. On top of that, you will also find an amphitheater on Mud Island, which is usually used for summer concerts for more than two decades now.
At the northern part of Mud Island, you can visit the Harbour Town. Here is where you will find an upscale modern neighbourhood that caters to a younger crowd. Most of the residences here consists of single family homes and apartment complexes. There is also a grassy section in Harbour Town that is sectioned as a park called the Mississippi Trail, with running tracks and resting benches overlooking the scenic Mississippi River landscape. The Mississippi Trail starts from the headwaters at Lake Itasca up to near the mouth of the river in Venice Louisiana. This trail is like a heaven for cyclists, with Itasca Park having more than 20 miles of paved biking trails that goes past beautiful lush pines and birch of Minnesota’s North Woods.
