CINCINNATI, Ohio -- Up before dawn, toss on a jacket and roll down the hills, dropping toward the river. Follow the hint of dankness toward sloshing waves and wait in the lifting darkness for morning's first glint off gingerbread trim and glass pilot houses.

Suddenly, sunrise illuminates dozens of floating wedding cakes, a steam horn startles the birds, and someone tickles calliope keys. Holy Mark Twain, it's Tall Stacks time again!

		If you go ... Tall Stacks Music, Arts and Heritage Festival in Cincinnati Information: 1-800-344-3445; www.cincyusa.com

This is my ritual every time Tall Stacks, America's largest gathering of riverboats, puffs into Cincinnati's Public Landing on the Ohio River. For a moment, I pretend it's the mid-1800s, when 200 boats a day jostled to tie up at the thriving Port of Cincinnati and passengers were only $2 away from a riverboat ticket to any stop along 16,000 miles of inland waterways.

Cincinnati was one of the great riverboat centers of antebellum America, her shipyards launching dozens of steamboats a year and her stockyards surpassing Cork, Ireland's, as pork packer to the world. The "Queen City," as Longfellow poetically dubbed her, was America's sixth-largest.

The shipyards are long submerged beneath the shifting banks of the Ohio and pigs no longer run in the streets, but for five days in October, Cincinnati will once again be the capital of all things river. During the sixth Tall Stacks Music, Arts and Heritage Festival from Oct. 4-8, hoop-skirted ladies and top-hatted gentlemen will wander the cobblestones among a million visitors who come for steamboat cruises, races and parades.

The festival is named for the tall, black smokestacks atop each steamboat. On old, steam-powered boats, the high smokestacks were a necessity, keeping sparks from coal- or wood-fired boilers away from wooden decks and flammable cargo. On modern boats, it just wouldn't be a real river queen without a pair of shiny metal smokestacks.

Tall Stacks, which began as a one-time bicentennial blast in 1988, has become a tradition that sprawls broadly along two shores, in downtown Cincinnati and Newport, Ky. This year, 17 riverboats, old and new, will steam in from 11 cities, from the 1930 workhorse P.A. Denny of Newport, Ky., to the glittering, three-deck confection of the 1985 Colonel of Galveston, Texas.

Some, like New Orleans' Magnolia Belle, are true sternwheelers, propelled only by the power of her paddlewheel. The 1969 Magnolia Belle might look familiar from Disney's "The Adventures of Huck Finn" in 1993.

This is truly Mark Twain's era, and the great humorist did a six-month stint in Cincinnati in 1856, working for a printer by day and researching the riverfront by night. Twain would recognize the Tall Stacks stretch of the Ohio, encapsulated in a time cocoon that descends upon the old riverfront each festival. It's an era when people and products traveled at five miles per hour, and America grew through her spidery network of navigable rivers. At the height of the steamboat era, more than 11,000 paddlewheelers splashed along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.

Tall Stacks evokes the steamboat heyday along the shore where it happened. Action central is the steeply banked old Public Landing and newer Serpentine Wall, a levee whose terraces follow the water line in concrete waves. To further the steamboat illusion, artists paint extensive canvas facades to line the waterfront, long stretches of warehouses, hotels and businesses inspired by 19th-century architecture still standing downtown. The facade creates the backdrop for concerts, sideshows and riverboat parades and races -- feel free to pull up a seat on any hay bale.

The riverboats angle up to the shore for breakfast, lunch and dinner cruises, and it's fascinating to tour the boats and feel how hot and noisy the engine room is, to see how tiny the crew cabins are and how efficient the galleys.

Only two of this fall's boats have starred in all six festivals: the Delta Queen and the Belle of Louisville. These grande dames are riverboat royalty, with the Delta Queen set to hit a stately 70 in 2007, and the 1914 Belle of Louisville, one of the last Mississippi River-style steamboats. Both are National Historic Landmarks.

Life on the river, still vital to modern commerce, continues during Tall Stacks, so it's easy to see a modern barge suddenly pop into view next to a 1840s-style paddlewheeler. But all barge and private traffic stops during the riverboat races and the grand finale, the Parade of Tall Stacks on the last afternoon.

The races are exhilarating, especially for those on board. Our boat in Tall Stacks 2003 never topped 8 mph and we really didn't contribute much to the effort -- except our God-given roles as ballast and our cheers. The captains and the pilots were the heroes of the day, and we saluted them as our boat pulled victorious into port.

Most races head upriver toward the old Coney Island amusement park, make a giant loop and return to the landing. The Parade of Tall Stacks follows the same course, in a stately procession that has both shores and all the bridges lined with photographers.

It wouldn't be a river fest without music -- five days of it on four stages, with more than 40 national acts. The focus is American roots music, from such legends as The Blind Boys of Alabama, Dr. John, Al Green, Bettye LaVette and Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder.

And when you can't hear one more twang, cruise on one more riverboat or eat one more bite of Cincinnati chili? There's always the chance for a quiet moment, communing with horse and dog at the temporary stables of the Budweiser Clydesdales in Great American Ball Park, where the Reds play.

Baseball season will be waning as these great, hairy-hooved beauties take to Mehring Way every day in a showy parade, then tour Sawyertown and Steamboat City to schmooze with the kids. But when man and beast both need a break, the horses and their Dalmatian pals will be quietly stabling at Great American. Visitors are welcome to swing by and say "Hi," and they don't even need a Tall Stacks ticket.