9-14-18 9-15-18 Riding the Raging Mississippi

We left out of Alton with 3 boats with a promise of getting right through the lock. Well that didn’t work out we had to do the dance. 3 boats doing the Dosido with each other waiting for the lock that was supposed to be ready for us. Luckily it wasn’t a terrible wait, but still annoying when the lock tender says come on down, I’ll put you through.

We finally made it into the Mel Price Lock

The Mississippi was muddy thus her nick name “Big Muddy” and flowing like crazy with lots of trees to dodge.

It looked like we were boating in chocolate milk

Our cruising speed 8 mph, but with the current we were going as fast as 14 miles per hour. You do need to shave some of that time off for all the zigs and zags we did to dodge logs. Luckily the boats we traveled with and we did not sustain any tree damage. Phew. I give Scott tons of credit because it was some tense driving, watching currents, wing dams, trees and tows that may be hiding around the next bend. I did some driving too, so I can appreciate the tension behind the wheel. He’s great at it and trusts me to drive too. I guess we are experienced after 10,000 miles behind the wheel.

Shortly after Mel Price Lock is Channel Rock. On the left is the course to take but it sure looks like you should go right.

Shortly after getting on the river we went by St. Louis. What a shame that that city does not have a marina. The famous arch is right on the river. Many boaters would love to stop there. I took Pictures of Sea Tiger and Bob N Along as they went passed the Arch. The sky was an electric blue and they turned out great!

We put in a long day and went to Kaskaskia Lock where we could tie up on their wall. There were only 5 boats there. There are very few spots to stop along the river so we were thankful to tie up here for the night. We had docktails in the tiny bit of shade cast by the wooden slatted wall. It was so hot again. Argh… Then back to our boat where we turned on our generators and flip on the air for some relief before bed.

You can diesel fuel right here on the river if you make arrangements 24 hours in advance and take on at least 75 gallons

The tows throw up huge rooster tails and wakes that last for miles. Yowsa

Next stop was Little Diversion canal off the Mississippi where Bob N Along and we anchored. We were feeling adventurous, so we dropped our dinghies and instead of heading up the canal like most sane people we decided to go UP 3 miles on the Mississippi river in our dinghies to a small town Cape Girardeau.

I think we might be a bit dinghy to do this. We started off with all of us in our dinghy…..too much weight we couldn’t get up on plane. The we took both dinghies and Bob and Natalie couldn’t get up on plane with 2 people. So in the middle of the raging Mississippi Natalie crawled into our dinghy and we were off. All was going well. Bob’s motor is smaller than ours, but we kept him insight. Under the bridge we go on our approach to the town wall, the three of us were scoping out our best place to dock. We found the perfect spot designed just for this. But with our attention on our docking, we neglected to watch for Bob. We tied up and immediately turned around to make sure he was right on our tail……oh oh no site of Bob. We were just getting ready to take off to go find him when we saw him under the bridge. When he got there, he told us he ran out of gas despite having a full tank. Thankfully we are all smart boaters and brought extra. But he did admit it was exciting flowing backwards out of control down the river while filling the tank. Going against the river eats up the gas. They have a tiny tank on their motor, so this was not a huge surprise.

The town was small but did not fail to provide us with a brewery. Best part was they were tapping small batch IPA at 4pm. Bob and Scott couldn’t wait.

We roamed the town and started to head back toward the dinghies to get dinner.

On the corner was a company or two of firefighters that came out of the ice cream store.

One of thousands of logs in the river from flooding.

We yacked with them and they were amazed at our trip. We gave them our cards and headed for the dinghies. Next thing we know they all followed behind us. I am sure they thought they were in for some entertainment with these crazy people in their dinghies on the Mississippi. We are glad to say we had no “shitshow” for them. But what they didn’t know was that Bob ran out of gas again down river and couldn’t get the engine started right away. We towed him up river. Scott may have gotten a little carried away with his speed and Bob’s dingy went over our wake and he almost went in the river. Yes, we all had life jackets on. No harm no foul.

The engine primed and started and off we went back to our boats. We kept going up the canal to scope out a dog potty place for some boaters. The water was like glass. Along side the canal was a soy bean field that was flooded.