The Beaches of Vicksburg, Revisited

This is a follow up to a post I wrote about a month ago featuring the Mississippi River at Vicksburg (The Beaches of Vicksburg). If you would like to read that story before reading this one, you can click on the link. After reaching an historic high last year of 57.1 feet on May 19, 2011, the Mississippi River at Vicksburg has been extremely low this summer, uncovering unusually large sandbars. According to an article in today's edition of The Vicksburg Post: "The level at Vicksburg was minus 0.83 feet this morning, down a tenth since yesterday. The record low is minus 7 feet in 1940.... A persistent drought and above-average sediment left behind by the river’s historic flood in 2011 has contributed to the current levels along the Lower Mississippi, predicted to linger until October. Forecasts for stages in Vicksburg project a drop to minus 2.3 feet by late September." Although, in all likelihood, the river levels will not reach an historical low (minus 7 feet), the low water levels and sandbars are an amazing sight to behold. I went down to the river a few days ago, and captured some pictures of the "beaches" along its banks, and of uncovered sandbars in the middle of the river (all these pictures were taken on the Vicksburg side, looking toward the banks of the Louisiana side of the river). It's hard to believe that sandbars have cropped up in the middle of one of the widest spans of the river ... If you click on this picture, you can make out a camper on the "beach." I'd love to know where he was from and what brought him to the sandy beaches of the Mississippi River at Vicksburg.