Touch of Class

Good Morning/Afternoon all! (I started writing this at 9:30)  We are back on the grid J  We are currently at Green Turtle Marina in Grand Rivers, KY.  They had a special deal on for Loopers, stay for 7 day only pay for 5.  So we are staying here for the next week.  We got 7 days for $312.70 which included about $17.70 in tax (13.44%)!  $44.67 a day though is pretty good and we get free cable and power.  This is a very large marina with plenty of walking spaces.  They have laundry facilities, $1.75 a load which is a little steep I think but what ya gunna do when you start to stink and people start giving you a wide birth?

As a transient boater, we have free access to the indoor pool, exercise area and the Yacht Club dining.  If you were here as an annual boater, you’d have to pay $500 entrance fee and $35 (?) a month. They do have a breakfast lunch place called the Dockers that anyone can use.  They also have boats you can rent and kayaks too.  The place is surrounded by condo/townhouses that you can rent to.  Pretty impressive place.  We still like Sunnyside better though :).

The town is only 1 mile away and they have an IGA there.   We’ll be checking that out later.  They have a few courtesy cars and you can also rent a golf cart and use it to drive into town.  Lots of different looking boats here.  I’ll be updating the blog with pictures from here so I hope you enjoy them.

So….where have we been since October 10^th, here is what happened……

October 10, 2013 – we left Quincy Yacht Harbor at about 7:15 heading for lock 21.  There were little foot prints or should I say Paw prints, on our swim platform

Paw Prints on the Swim Platform at Quincy

I think we must have had a visitor last night.  Another good reason to keep your transom door closed and locked!  This part of the river is pretty repetitive, trees, sand, and rocks.  There are always a few surprises.  What the heck is that?

Propane Grill on a Sand Bar

Yup, it’s a full size grill sitting on a sand bar.  We saw 2 more of these on our travels.  I guess people use them on weekends?  Whatever floats you boat I guess :).    The trees down here have been getting mossy

Mossy trees on the Mississippi

Gary said the moss or vines where planted to keep the banks of the river from falling in but the vines ended up taking over the trees and killing them.  Another good idea from the Government that didn’t work!  Hee, Hee.

Then we ran into a cloud making factory, really we did!

Cloud Making Factory

The river so far has been dead calm which is always good and makes for easier driving.  We went thru locks 21 and 22 but there is no 23, kind of weird.  Luckily we got right in to both of those.  We have been very fortunate so far with the locks.  Haven’t had to wait too long for them.  We arrived at Two Rivers Marina at Rockport, IL.  The dockage was $62.50 per night ($1.25/foot).  That was a nice marina.  They had us stay on the front of one of their docks.  Wow, what a dock.  12 foot wide walkways and 6 foot wide fingers.  Roof.  Cement.  Very nice.  A few of their amenities weren’t working, like the pool, restaurant, courtesy van and the wireless.  But nice dock and nice people working there.

Rockport Marina

While we were there a 50 foot Gibson houseboat pulled in.

Mark and Jane’s 50 foot Gibson

The Asian Carp were jumping out of the water behind their boat.  Then the fish started heading toward our boat.  The jumped similar to a dolphin, but they are uglier.  I think the noise of the Gibson made the fish come up.  Apparently they don’t like noise.  The Gibson it turns out belongs to Mark and Jane Priniski.  They had their boat at Kings Cove.  They are first time big boat owners and are livin the dream, like us.  We got to know them a little better over a nice pizza (thank you Priniski’s) and some wine on the dock.

October 11, 2013 – We left Two Rivers Marina at 7:40 and continued our journey.  The first lock we came to was 24.  It was like a ghost lock.  Once we got in, no one came out of any building so we figured we should just float in the middle again.  We thanked them but no response.  I guess they didn’t have their morning coffee yet.  We locked thru lock 25 and got the same reception as lock 24.  We started flying our AGLCA flag today, could that be it?  It is windy today and about 68°.  There is less stuff to look at and entertain us but we are definitely not bored. There is a lot to do when you are driving the boat.  Watch the gauges to make sure nothing is over heating, keep your eye on the Garmin to make sure you are going the right way, stay between the buoys and watch for logs in the river.  There have been a few times we had to dodge logs.  It is good to stay alert.

Remember when I said we see weird stuff?  Here is another example.

Lazy Boy on an island

Ok…I guess I can see the grills, but a chair?  That is carrying your creature comforts a little to far.  I mean come on!  You are pulling up to a sand beach on the river!  We have been living too long without people.  We are starting to fart, burp and scratch at will.  The cat is getting embarrassed.  We better control ourselves when we get around real people again.

Look at those caves under that house!  I don’t know if I’d want to be the owner of the house.

Caves under house

House with cave under it

We pulled into Grafton Harbor, a 64 mile trek.

Grafton Harbor

We got some gas at $4.16 (with the Lopper’s discount) then we checked out our gas mileage.  We are getting a little over 3 MPH.  Pretty good for the old gal.  Nice marina.  We paid $62.50 for dockage there ($1.25/foot).  They had a pool and a hot tub that were still open, a winery across the street and some interesting looking boats.  See the blow up girl pirate in the stern and the grass roof!  They had a party on the pier that night, sounded like fun! 

Cool Boat – day light

Cool Boat at night

Weird thing though, they had no cleats on the docks, you had to tie to the uprights that held up the roof.  Luckily I have seen Gary tie off to things that aren’t cleats so I was able to do the initial boat tie up when we go to the dock.

Our boat at Grafton Marina

October 12, 2013 – we left Grafton at 7:45 (no rest for the wicked on this trip).  Today is about 63° and cloudy and it looks like it might rain soon.  We passed Our Lady of Rivers.  Gary said they have a blessing of the boat there.  Missed that event I guess, oh well.

Our Lady of the Rivers

We learned something new reading the river charts.  Some of the locks have a strobe light instead of the green light for the recreational boaters to signal it is time for them to come in.  Well maybe that was our problem at locks 24 and 25.  They never did the green one, just the strobe light.  I guess they thought we were a bunch of idiots and we thought they were grumpy.  Goes to show…..

We locked thru Mel Price lock and dam.  I caught my first bollard.  Good job Colleen!  There was a lot of debris across the entire entrance of that dam.  We let the fishing boat that was practically glued to our port side go ahead of us and clear a path thru the debris.  See, we smart boaters :).

Once we passed thru that lock it turned more industrial, more tows, more barges anchored to the shore.  They have big chains and moorings to hold them in place.  We had to stay to the left side of the channel to enter the Chain of Locks Cannel.

Chain of Lakes

Apparently there is a 4 foot drop if you go the other way, yikes!  This cannel is really, really narrow.  We just followed a tow down to where the lock 27 is.  As we got closer there were tows everywhere.  I heard on the marine band that one tow was not schedule to go thru the lock till tomorrow.  Holy Crap!  Man, I hope we don’t have to wait two days to get thru the lock.  Luckily they had an auxiliary one and they locked us right thru.  This lock was really different.  It didn’t have a door that closed in the back; it just had a wall that came up from the river rather than two doors that closed.

Lock 27

We floated in this one too.  We arrived at St. Louis around 12:30, man alive, that place is hoppin!  Tows everywhere going every which way.  Cattle boats giving tours.  It was crazy.  Here are some pictures:

St. Louis Arc

St. Louis Arch 2

I’ll add some more pictures on the picture page.

Look at this house we passed, what the heck!

House with leggs

House with Legs

Legs

Our final destination for the day was Hoppies.  I have heard so much about Hoppies and Vern from Gary that I was dying to meet her and see the place.  We paid $62.50 for dockage ($1.25/foot); Gary said this is a raise from the last time he was here….6 years ago!  Maybe they are entitled :).  Vern’s daughter took me to the grocery store so I could pick up some milk and bread.  I’d never find that store again :), of course I am the one that gets lost in a bag.

Vern gave her Captain’s talk at 4.  She is a Tug Boat Anne type of gal but she sure knows here stuff.  Gary showed up with his charts.  Sounds like they are having trouble with a rock wall they installed down river a little ways.  It is causing it to shoal in by their dock.  Hopefully something will be done or it sounds like Hoppies may end up having trouble in the future.  that would be a big loss for the area and the boaters that stop by for fuel.

There was a sail boat there; Kestrel I think is their name.  They are eventually going to Venaswayla (you know, some place really south).  They had their mast and sail shipped to Pensacola, FL where they are going to have some outfitting done on their boat.  Who showed up???? Mark and Jane again in their Gibson.  Glad they made it.  They are heading to Green Turtle too.  We hope they have enough gas to make it.  Mark was a math teacher, he calculates that they should make it with the gas they have.  We’ll keep our fingers crossed.

October 13, 2013 – We are going to travel about 80 miles each for the next two days and stay at anchorages Vern told us about.  Apparently the place Gary stopped at in 2006 that was like a drainage channel is silted in so that is why Vern suggested these other two anchorages.  As we traveled on the river we sat on channel 13 on the marine band.  This is the channel the tows sit on, that way we can kind of keep track of them.  There were 3 corners where you had to announce yourself before you entered the corner because you didn’t want to meet a tow in the corner because they could take up the entire width of the river.  When you travel thru those tight curves, the water gets all swirly and the water drops off to 50 to 65 feet!  It is kind of hard to maneuver thru these curves with the swirls.  When you pass a north bound tow, because they are fighting the current, they push up a pretty big wash.  You want to make sure to don’t travel in their wash as they can swirl up logs and junk that you for sure don’t want to hit. 

When we get to our first anchorage, the sailboat Kestrel and a CHB trawler, Osprey, are here.

First Anchorage

We find a good place and settle down for the night.  We only run the generator for a little while at night just to charge the batteries so we end up going to bed around 8:30.  I found that my new Kindle with the white screen really comes in handy while we anchor out because I can read it real easy even in the dark.  There were a crap load of tows that went by last night.  We figured maybe because it was Monday tomorrow they were more active.  It seems they do a lot of their traveling at night. We also had some guy that drove up in his john boat.  Let me just say, we were quit a ways from a city.  What do you want weird man?  Why are you coming over to check out the 3 boats anchored this late at night?  Not that I am paranoid but you can’t be too careful.  He spent more time withe the sail boat than me.  I guess the sail boat guy was more chatty.  I’m like…move on guy, nothing to see here.

October 14, 2013 – we got up at 6 and left the anchorage at 7.  We traveled with the sailboat and the CHB for most of the day.  We passed by Cape Girardeau at 9:30.

Cape Girardeau

Cape Girardeau

We came upon a dredging operation and a 5 X 5 tow.

Tow passing Dredge

We called them on the radio and they asked that we wait up river till they passed the dredging operation before we passed them.  Of course we obliged, after all, they are bigger than us and the kings of the river.

We also learned that on the curves of the river, the south bound tows have the right of way.  The north bound tows, who have more control over their vessels in the current, will wait at the mouth of a curve if there is a south bound tow coming thru the curve.  We passed a south bound tow at one curve and it was a good thing because we found a bunch of north bound tows pulled over waiting for the south bound tow.  That made sailing for us a breeze!  We lost the CHB though when we passed that tow so it was just the sailboat and us.  We got to our last anchorage before we headed up the Ohio.  The sailboat had us go in first and check things out.  Sure….make us the guinea pig will ya?  We both got in there fine and settled in for the night.

October 15, 2013 – we left the anchorage at 7:30 and left the sailboat in the dust.  We started going up the Ohio.  The current is pretty strong and we are heading north now.  We decided to use both engines and drive at 1400 to make some time.  I learned that you should make sure you can see the side of the barge that is heading toward you, that way you know you are not in their direct path.  Good lesson to learn to make sure you don’t get run over :).   Look at this pile of coat at one of the plants we passed.  Glad the NSP plant by the Sunnyside didn’t have any this high!

Coal Pile

We passed by the new lock they are building to replace lock 53 and 52.  That was quite a site.  You guys think the bridge is a project, this is twice as impressive.  Look at the travel lift they have!

Travel Lift

And that is some kind of floating lift or something.

Floating lift

It was very cool to see as we passed by.

We got to Lock 53.  A few days before they had the wickets down (I have no idea what a wicket is but I am glad they put them up), boats were just driving over the wickets so they didn’t have to lock through.  Apparently the river was too swift and the tows couldn’t make it over them so there was quite a back up.  When we got there though, got right in.  Man, this one was old.

Lock 53

See how far the building is for the lock?  That is because the water level raises so high they had to build that building that far away from the lock.  They only opened 1 door and the guy opened it did it by pulling a metal bar.  We were only lifted 5 feet and we had to use our own ropes to hang on to the lock walls.  That was differant.

It has been rainy and cloudy all day today.  Boo! See me in my rain gear, cute huh?  Beartrax….do you notice anything?  That is the life vest you got me for Christmas a few years ago.  I finally get to use it and I wear it every time I go out on deck or tie up the boat.  Thanks!

Colleen in rain gear

We got to lock 52 and called them.  They told us we had to have 50 feet of line and everyone had to wear a life jacket on deck.  The life jackets weren’t a problem but we only had 1 50 foot line so Gary had to tie two together.  They are only supposed to be raising us 10 feet,  why do they need 50 feet of line?  What the heck?  Plus I can’t throw a line 25 feet up, oh no!  Help Mr. Bill!  Well we ended up waiting 1 1/2 hours to lock thru.  They had two chambers and they already had a tow in the one we were going to be in so the Lockmaster told us it would be ½ hour but the tow was a tight squeeze so it took a while to get him in just right.  When we finally got in the lock they lowered down a hook so we could put our line on it, the guy pulled it up, looped it around a round cleat and was suppose to pass the line down to me…he didn’t.  He started passing Gary the hook to grab his line but because I didn’t have a hold of my line we started drifting away from the wall.  We were tying off on our port side so Gary had to run around back to the starboard side, maneuver the boat closer to the wall then run around again and try to pass up his line so he could tie off.  Then I had to ask the guy to pass down the end of the rope so I could have something to hang on to so the boat didn’t drift away from the wall again.  I guess he thought he had done that.  Once we were all tied in (the 50 feet lines were an over kill by the way), it still took forever to raise us about 10 feet.  I guess that is why they are building the new lock.  When we were done and they sounded the horn so we could go, I had to pull my line back to the boat, run to the front (I always manage the back of the boat and Gary does the front in the locks), open the door so Gary could run around and get into the boat quickly and then I was suppose to start the boat moving forward.  I never touch the controls when we are locking or docking, that is the Captain’s job.  Whew!  We made it.  That was too much for me :).  We anchored just north of the mouth of the Cumberland River.  It was windy at night so I didn’t get much sleep with the lap lapping of the water on the hull.  There was still plenty of tow traffic all night.  You could hear them drive by.

October 16, 2013 – We left the anchorage at about 7.  The Cumberland River is very narrow and we have pretty much left the tow traffic behind us.  There have been quite a few sand/gravel companies on the rivers as we head north.  Check out this one

Gravel Company

Cumberland River

As you can see the Cumberland River is pretty narrow.  We saw a tow crew waiting to be picked up

Tow Crew

You can see how the high water has eroded the river bank.  Look at those roots.

Erosion on river

We got to the Barkley Lock and Dam around noon.

Barkley Dam

This will be a 57 foot lift.  As we hadn’t seen any traffic, at all, we got right in.  This is such a cool lock!  It is sooooo BIG!  We tied up to the bollard again.  Gary took this one as I couldn’t lasso the bollard this time.  The lock walls were dry which tells me they hadn’t had to lock anyone thru in quite a while.  Again though, very impressive lock.

Doors opening

After we got out, ½ mile down the river there was Green Turtle.

Green Turtle

And so, here we are.  I’ll be updating with just pictures and a little more about the marina.  It’s laundry time and clean the boat time and get some exercise time for us.  We have full internet so we should be able to stay in the grid for the next few days.

Well that only took me 6 hours!  Thanks for reading and following our adventure.  Ta Ta for now 🙂

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!

We have not had internet for the past several days.  We were going to rely on Gary’s Hotspot on his T-Mobile phone but his coverage has not been that great.  Pat assures me that will change once we are further south.  I hope so or we may have to come up for another solution for our internet.

I learned a few things in our past few days of travel.  Don’t always trust what is in the Quimby’s.  A marina that we were going to stay at was not open and another that listed a 3 foot minimum depth had plenty of water.  We are currently in Davenport IA at a wonderful marina called Linsay Park Yacht Club.  Mile Marker 484.0.  They just had the marina dredged so there was plenty of water for us.  They have a restaurant on site that we had dinner at.  Very good, big portions and reasonably priced.  They have a bunch of Yacht Club flags there and the one for the SCYC was flying.  Cool!  Here are some pictures of the marina, restaurant and a cool Chris Craft that is next to us:

Marina Office

Restaurant

Chris Craft

Here is a little bit of what has been happening.  On 10/3 we left Pettibone at about 7 A.M.   We were close to Brownsville, MN when we ran into a dredging operation

Dredge

The dredge covered the entire span of the river.  They had their Pilot Boat, which is to the left of the dredge in the picture, take us behind the red marker and show us the way to get around.  They also made sure we had plenty of water so we didn’t run aground.  That was really nice of them.

We made it thru the Lock and Dam #8 around 9 AM.  We had to punch it up as the American Queen was going to be locking thru

American Queen

When we crossed over the state line into Iowa, there was a sign along the bank  that showed that we were crossing the state line.  That was a little weird.  By the time we reached Lock 9, they were having a Safety Meeting!  Didn’t know they had those but glad they do :).  The weather has been not too bad so far.  We arrived at Lady Luck Casino in Marquette IA around 3. We tied up to the Lady Luck Marina gas dock.  It was closed so there is no electric.  But it is only $45 for our size boat and within walking distance to the Casino and town .  A few drawbacks…it is close to a high traffic bridge and the trucks sound like they are J-Braking going over it plus it is also really close to the RR tracks.  Holy Crap!  Could they blow their horns any louder or for any longer?  I didn’t sleep to well that night, between the trucks, the train horns, the music from the Casino and the cat barfing in the middle of the night…..

On the 4th we left at 8 AM.  We had been leap frogging a sail boat for the past few days.  He is one guy pulling a canoe, with a bike and a tarp covering everything.  His boat is called Neverland, he told us he is traveling down to Port St. Joe, FL.  He is gets 20 MPG with his little Honda outboard.  I don’t think we’ll run into him again, after all, he is traveling at 4 knots and we are traveling at 7 knots.  It will be fun to see what kind of boats and people we meet up with on the way.  Everyone we met has sure been friendly.

Smokie is getting braver, he is coming out early in the morning rather than spending the entire day down below.  See Smokie, the Girls aren’t that scary!

Day 4, Smokie shows up

You can also see how we hang our life jackets right by the door.  We make sure we have our life jackets on when ever we are traveling and we step outside of the boat.  Better safe than sorry!

At mile marker 608 there was a ferry crossing

Ferry Crossing

We went thru locks 10 and 11 today.  We floated in 10.  I had my sister-in-law, Martha, ask me why they had us float.  It is easier when there is only one boat and not too much wind to just have us float in the middle of the lock while they raise or lower the water.  We have been doing that quite a bit which is nice.  We stayed at Dubuque Yacht Basin tonight. Pretty shallow.  We stirred up quite a bit of mud.  We have heard from several people that the river is down this year, as we are finding out too.  After we were tied up, we talked to the Captain of American Lady, a dinner boat, he told us where to go to get the boat out in the morning.  He told us that Kevin Rabbit stayed there for a month while he got his boat repaired (our old Pearson).  The Captain also told us Kevin sold the Pearson and is taking someone’s Paddleboat up to NY.  That should be quite an adventure for him.

On the 5th we left around 7:30.  We always have two binoculars handy.  One for Gary and one for me.  As we both have different eye sights and different eye spans, it is much simpler to each have our own binoculars (thanks Dinglers!) As we travel down we are finding that the scenery is pretty much like it is on the Mississippi up north.  A lot of trees and the occasional small town.  We have seen a few interesting items as we traveled.  This was on the roof of one of the buildings in one of the Locks

One of the Lock & Dams

Chair under Trestle

We saw this table and chairs sitting under a train trestle.  No house that we could see.

Smashed Boat

We saw this boat close to the Quad Cities.  Holy Smokes!  What happened to that??

There was another section of river where there were a lot of islands, not many trees on them or anything but one had an old-fashioned street light on it.  It looked like it had a batter pack to turn the light on.  Small island, just dead trees.  Another weird thing.

We stayed at Clinton Marina last night, $62.50.  This is a former Skipper Bobs.  VERY nice marina.  It has a restaurant, bar, laundry and showers.  We decided to do some laundry as it was only $1 a load.  They have a gated dock so we felt very safe.  There are lots of places to walk and a few blocks north of the marina, there are a bunch of fast food restaurant.  Oh yeah, the give you free ice too.  What a deal!

We got a late start this AM but we didn’t have far to go.  It was nice and sunny in the AM but crapped out later, cold, windy, rainy.  Another nice day.  What the heck?  I thought we were heading south to nice warm weather.  Where is it?

We learned today that you should always let the lock know you are waiting.  We got to lock 13, there was a barge coming out and 1 waiting to come in.  Gary figured we were in for a long wait.  While the one barge pulled out, the green light came on (you have to wait for the green light before you enter the lock), I told Gary we should call them to see if there was another barge waiting on the southern part of the dam.  When I called them, they said, “we gave you a horn and a green light, come on in and we’ll lock you down.”  Lucky for us and a good lesson learned.

Today we were passed by a really cool hovercraft.  Looked pretty old but it was really neat.  Flew by us pretty quickly but didn’t even make a wake.  I am learning how to talk to bridges, barges and the locks.  I learned what a 1 and 2 whistle means.  “Stay to my ones or go to my 1 whistle” means stay to the right of me.  This is what the barge Captains tell you. I am doing  a lot of the driving and I let Gary take over for the locks and docking.  Gotta let the guy have a little fun 🙂  We were suppose to stay at Isle of Capri Marina tonight but we found out it was closed even though the Quimby said it was open.  Gary tried to get the boat in the marina but it was so windy and the only spot we could sneak into was in a tight spot so we gave up on that.  It was starting to look pretty nasty out and the winds were pretty brisk.  We checked out some of the marinas in the Quimby’s.  None of them looked too appealing.  Here is a description of how to get into one “Off channel, about even with upstream end of old canal wall that runs down center of river.  Upstream entrance is above rock pile with government light and lateral wall etc, etc.  Really.  That sounds simple and uncomplicated.  Gary decided to put a shout out on 16 and luckily someone answered.  The guy was breaking up pretty bad but he directed us to where we are staying for the night. So glad someone called us back.  Now we are tucked in safe and sound, no trucks, no trains, hopefully no barfing cat.  I am hoping for a good night sleep.

We will be on the hook for the next 2 to 3 days so I might not be able to post.  If I have coverage, which I have had on my phone (Yeah Verizon!), I always do a check in on Facebook.  I am listed as Mary Hermes if you at least want to know where we are. If you send me a friend request, I’ll friend you.

Thanks to those of you who are following our journey, I hope I am not too boring 🙂 Good night 😉

Left Wabasha this Morning at 6:55 A.M.  It was a little foggy on the river

Fog from Wabasha

and cold last night, we forgot to close the door to the fly bridge…..Brrrrr!  Gary is still a little under the weather so I am sleeping in the VIP room with the cat.  Not quite as comfy as our stateroom.  Hope he gets better soon 🙂

We were able to float free in Lock and Dam  #4, that was different.  At Lock 5A we paired up with two trawlers that were traveling South, Southern Bell and Mystical

Two Trawlers we traveled with

One of them had an AIS so he was able to keep track of the barge traffic for us so we were able to avoid delays at all our locks.  On the St. Croix we traveled at 6.5 knots and we were bucking a wind, today we traveled at 7.4 knots, 1 engine, 1300 RPM, we seemed to be sailing along and making good time.  Tonight we are at LaCrosse Pettibone  Boat Club  marina, $1 a foot.  Weather sounds crappy tomorrow but we’ll forge on.

I’ll leave you with a picture of Smokie in us usual spot while we travel

Smokies Fav Spot while we travel

That is the starboard window in the VIP room.

We left Treasure Island at 8:22 .  We got right in the Lock and Damn, which was great.  We had smooth sailing again, a little chop on Pepin but not much.  Only saw 2 barges.   We arrived at Wabasha at 1:30  They have done a lot of improvement since the last time we were here.  But apparently next year the only transient spot will be at the gas dock so call before you come.  Wabasha was having an October fest.  Here are some pictures from it

Gary by big pumpkin

Gigantic Pumpkins

Of course we walked to Slippery’s for a beer and some onion rings.  Just wouldn’t be a trip to Wabasha without that :).

Tomorrow we take a BIG trip to LaCrosse, 64 miles and 4 locks.  We’ll be getting up early.  Wish us luck!

Well, we got a late start today, had a wonderful send off by the Sunnyside Crew.  Thanks guys and Melinda!  We  decided to take it easy and so we made it as far as Treasure Island.  We got held up for a while at Prescott waiting for them to lift the railroad bridge.  4 inches, didn’t want to take any chances right out of the gate.  The winds were pretty brisk all day and of course at TI they were howling.  Aiming for one slip and made it in another.  Oh well, at least we made it.  Had to use our step-ladder to get on and off the boat cause we were sticking out the end too far.  Gary was a smart man for bringing it along. Tomorrow we are heading to Wabasha.  Hopefully we’ll not have any issues and the winds sound like they will be a little lighter.  Good Night all!

We have spent the last week getting ready to leave.  I have been provisioning the boat.  We compiled a list over several months of the things we thought we might need.  Based on that list I made shopping lists.  I ended up going to 8 stores, some of them a couple of times.  Even with the lists, I would find things we needed. Unfortunately I should have stuck to those shopping list because we now have 8 bags of Tostitos and napkins coming out of our ying yang 🙂  Oh well, I am sure they will eventually get used.  I hope I didn’t over provision, I guess time will tell.

Gary has been busy changing racors, installing a new Garmin, running cables for the sounding unit, changing impellers, washing the boat, getting our bikes on etc, etc.  The Captain if feeling pretty under the weather tonight.  Hopefully he will be well enough to travel by tomorrow!

Thanks to the Sunnyside gang for a wonderful and delicious farewell lunch for Gary as it was his last day of work on Friday, luckily I was able to come too.  We will sure miss the best marina and the best crew.  It will be tough to find a marina to replace Sunnyside

Saturday we went to our last St. Croix Yacht Club party, the Haul out Party.  What great fun!  They really classed us up as they had a Ballet Troop perform for us

Pretty impressive.

We had a great time with our friends and the food from Dixies was delish!  I have a blackmailing picture to post of two people dancing on chairs but I’ll save that for when I need a favor :).

We had a final breakfast with our kids, it was great to spend some time with them and it was nice to be able to eat outside.  We will sure miss them all and hope they keep in contact through Skype.  Thanks to my sister, Debbie, who dropped off her famous chocolate chip cookies and to give a final hug good-bye.  With good weather brings busy stores so Tim & Martha couldn’t sneak away for a last good-bye, but we’ll see you all in November for the big event.

Thanks to everyone who wished us well, gave us retirement gifts and lots of advice.  We will miss each and every one of you.  The pressure has been put on me to keep this “blog” going so I hope I don’t disappoint any of you.  BTW, I can’t spell worth crap so excuse any misspelled words.

Hopefully the adventure starts tomorrow, until then, Happy Trails!

Thanks to our friends, Chuck and Rae and John and Donna for the fantastic Bon Voyage party!  It was really great and so much fun to see and talk to everyone.  So many people showed up, we were really surprised and honored.  Good friends, good food, good drink and good times.  Thank you all for coming and especially to our boating buddies for throwing us such a wonderful party.  We will certainly remember it for years to come and boy….are we going to miss you guys :).  I’ve uploaded some pictures on the picture page, hope you enjoy them.

Rae having some of the delish cake!

Picture in a Picture 🙂

Wow! What a cake, and it was made by John & Donna

We started this week out by doing some prep work.  I was de-frosting the fridge, taking inventory, preparing financial reports to keep track of our budget and actual spending (I am an excel spread sheet geek), restocking the boat and helping Gary when I could.  We finally found the perfect litter box for Smokie.  Top entry.  It’s wonderful!

Gary started by replacing raw water impellers, changing racor filters, new belts on “the girls”,  replacing some pencil zinc, installing 12 volt plugs so we can charge our phones, laptop and I-Pad, just to name a few items.

We were also able to get up North to Beartrax to visit our favorite Northern people: Tim, Martha and Bets plus Larry and Lynn.  So good to see them.  It was a long 3 months since the last time we visited.  Thanks to Bets for the wonderful dinner at the Grill, to celebrate her good test results and my retirement.  We’ll sure miss you guys, I had all I could do not to bawl when I left.  We’ll see you in November.

Smokie wanted to help too!

Haha!  Feels just like any other Saturday.  I’m sure it will take a few weeks before it sinks in.