Left Lindsey at 7:15 or so on the 7^th.  We got thru our first lock of the day, Lock 15A.  As we were traveling we heard the Coast Guard give their mariner report.  We have never listed to them on the St. Croix but thought we would give them a listen.  We found them very valuable.  They list different mile markers and problems that are occurring at them like silting, dredging operations etc.  I wrote them all down so as we came to them in the various parts of the river we could watch out for whatever hazard was listed.

There are parts of the river where you can see for a few miles and you almost feel like you can see the curvature of the earth.  It looked like the river just drops off.  It is really weird. We can’t believe the number of oddly colored homes/motor homes we have seen.  Here is a picture of a pink one!

Pink House

By Montpelier, IA, there were large clusters of barges just sitting on the side of the river, anywhere from 10 to 24 barges just sitting there.  We have seen more and more barges that are just sitting on the side of the river.  This one looks like it has seen better days.

We have been seeing a lot of these square green things in the water close to shore.  We figure they must be duck blinds.  Pretty funny looking.

Hunting Blinds

We made it thru two more dams, 16 & 17 then about 3:00 we found an anchorage, close to Keithsburg, IA, Gary found it on Activecaptain.com.  We pulled about 150 feet off of the cannel, in about 10 feet of water.  I forced Gary to re-learn Canasta (my favorite card game).  When we got ready for bed, let me just say….it was BLACK out.  No lights from anything.  Kinda freaky for me, I have a thing about being in pitch black.  I don’t care for it too much J.  Gary slept on “anchor watch” He slept in the pilot house to make sure we didn’t move off anchor.  Wouldn’t want to end up in the channel in the middle of the night and get run over by a barge, that would total suck and ruin our adventure J.

On the 8^th we left the anchorage with our destination being Keokuk Yacht Club.  While we locked thru lock 18, they made us shut off our engines.  The Lockmaster dictates his own rules so we had to abide by them, at least the engines started again, that would have been questionable if we still had the Pearson.

There are a lot of pelicans by shore and also when you some out of the locks, here are some pictures of them

Pelicans taking flight

Pelicans

As we headed down, we saw a lot of houses on stilts.  There were some houses where their stilts had been silted away and the houses were practically falling down.  You could tell they were abandoned. I wondered how they could just abandon the homes, who comes in and take s them down.

Whoops, looks like this guy anchored his boat and forgot to come back and get it.  He’ll have trouble getting that off shore!

House boat on shore

We stayed at Keokuk Yacht Club.  $50 ($1 a foot).  It was a really nice space.  Michael, the bartender, offered us his car if we wanted to go to town to get anything.  They have a small marina and a large building that you could go in and get drinks and pizza.  We had a couple of pitchers and a pizza.  That place was pretty hoppin for a Tuesday.

While we were there another boat showed up, a 42 foot Ocean Alexander called Oh My Marie.  They are from Red Wing and are taking their boat to Michigan to boat on Lake Michigan for a few years.  If you ask me they are heading the wrong way!

Today, the 9^th, we had a short run, only 44 miles.  The first lock we were going to go thru is lock 19, which was only a few miles away.  As I was making coffee I saw a barge heading south.  Yikes!  Let’s get going so we can beat him to the lock.  Crap, there is already a barge in the lock so we have to wait for it to get out.  In the mean time the tow and Oh My Marie show up.  Looks like it is going to be a long wait.

Lock 19 is really different from any lock I have been in so far.  They dropped us 38 feet and instead of ropes to hang on to, they had bollards.  With the bollards you tie your boat to it and the bollard goes down as the water drops.

Bollard Tie up

While we are waiting, the tow in the lock came out.  Usually the most you can fit in a lock is 3 barges, that is why it is such a long wait.  The tow has to push in 3 barges, lock down, tie it up, go back up, get the rest, lock down, tie them all back together, and then go.  This lock is so large that a tow with 15 barges, 3 wide and 5 deep, came out of the lock.  Wow!  Then we had some luck, the Lockmaster told the tow that had been waiting with us to come in and then the two pleasure boats would tie up in front of him.  Here are some pictures and a video.

Bollard

Crap!  I accidentally deleted the video of the bollard working, sorry!

As we waited to get into our next lock, #20, we heard from Oh My Marie (he was traveling a lot faster than we were).  He told us to be careful when we came out of Lock 20 as there were a bunch of logs and debris a little way out of the lock and it covered the entire channel.  As we got out of Lock 20 and we could see the debris and dead heads (a dead head is a large log that only has a very small portion of it peaking out of the water), and he wasn’t kidding.  There were logs and junk across the whole channel.  I had to go on the bow and tell Gary which way to go.  You couldn’t tell if the stick that was sticking out was just a little stick or was there a whole tree attached to it.  We only ticked one little thing so we did a pretty good job, but it was tough and slow going there for a while.  Of course as we fought for our lives thru the debris of trees and dead heads, little Smokie was slumbering in the VIP room :), no good cat!

We stayed at Quincy Yacht Club in Quincy, IL, tonight.  Nice little dock.  $50 ($1/foot).  There is a very nice looking restaurant right next door but we are grilling out tonight.  The dock is locked so we don’t have to worry about people getting on the dock in the middle of the night.  After we tied up and plugged in we took a nice long walk into town.  It is pretty industrial where we were.  Man!  It was up hill to the heart of town, we got our workout today.  There just seemed to be a lot business and it looks like they are trying to revitalize the area.  We didn’t search too hard for fast food or a grocery.

As I was sitting here downloading pictures, this tow comes buy with a few barges attached to it.  It looked like it has a bunch of junk on it.  Gary seemed to recall that some guy got a grant or something to go around and clean up the Mississippi.  While we watched they turned off the Mississippi and came down the small channel we were down.  I didn’t think they’d fit but they did.

Tow with Garbage

Here is one of our neighbors.  Notice the dog on the cat walk.  Brave fellow, I’d be afraid I’d fall in.

Neighbor with dog

I’ve update the picture tab with some other pictures I’ve taken.  I am going to start putting the newer pictures on top rather than on the bottom.  I think that will be easier for you guys to look at.

Sweet dreams until next time!