Wednesday, 10/12/11

No internet last night so I'm posting this on Thursday.

I finally figured out how to allow comments on this blog by everyone, so if you tried and weren't able to leave a comment before, you should be able to do so now.

Hauled up the anchor at 7:30 yesterday and started out in light fog and 63 degrees. We hope to get through 5 locks today so we can stay at La Crosse, WI.

Dunes in the middle of the river are of sand dredged up by the Corp of Engineers to keep the main channel at the required 9ft depth.

Reed’s Landing, MN.  When our girls were little, we used to drive there in mid-March to watch eagles diving for fish on the open water.

Entering Wabasha, MN, site of the National Eagle Center

National Eagle Center at Wabasha, MN

Eagle at the top of a sand dune just south of Wabasha

One of the barges we encountered.

We reached Lock and Dam #4 at Alma, WI and locked through without a wait.  Made Lock & Dam #5 at Minnesota City, MN at 10 am (16 mile distance) but we were behind a barge so we had to tread water until 12:20 pm when we finally got into the lock.  

Later, we encountered another barge headed south, but he called us and told us he’d move over so we could pass him and get to Lock & Dam #5A at Fountain City, WI.  We got to 5A at 1:30. 

Just before L&D #6 at Trempealeau, WI there was a barge ahead of us and he had no intention of letting us pass him so, though we arrived at the lock at 3 pm, we had to bob around and wait until 5 to get into the lock.  We had heavily overcast skies all day and some rain while we waited. 

 We anchored for the night at 5:30 at Trempealau, another beautiful little town on the river.

We only got about 45 miles for the day.

Carefully manuevering into position inside the lock.

 The up-river gate as we're being lowered.

The upper Mississippi from Minneapolis to Cairo, Illinois has 29 locks and dams that regulate water levels and facilitate barge transportation.  We'll have 22 more locks to navigate before we leave the Mississppi at Cairo and enter the Ohio River.

After dinner, we watched a movie that Phil brought about m/v International, the excursion boat that he has driven every summer for more than 20 years.  The boat is on Waterton Lake in the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park located on the border of Alberta, Canada and Montana.  Both m/v International (which is US registered and leaves from Montana) and the Prince of Wales hotel (on the lake just across the border in Alberta) were built in 1927 by the Great Northern Railway, headquartered in St Paul, MN.  After seeing the movie, we told Phil that we will definitely visit him there some day after we complete at least one circumnavigation of the Great Loop.