Day 7: Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Underway: 7:12 am Motor Off: 4:15 pm Miles Traveled: 40 Stayed At: Marina
First Things First: First survey boat sounding and charting the channel; first swamp boat (flat bottom boat powered by pusher propeller); first free docking at a marina.
Mile 620 to Mile 580: Today was just a slog – the wind was gusting close to 30 mph straight on our nose for most of the day (except when the river turned around a bend blocking a little of the wind). Boris (our 8 hp Evinrude) worked hard today to keep our speed at around 5.7 mph – sometimes dropping below 5 mph in big gusts.
You feel very alone sometimes on the river. We probably saw a total of 15 boats today in 40 miles of travel – more boats than this go through our bay on Minnetonka in 15 minutes on summer weekends. Houses and other signs of civilization are scarce except near towns (which are few and far between). Just high bluffs, lots of trees and water everywhere you look. And trains – lots of trains. We have seen more trains on this trip than we’ve seen in our whole life to this point. Big, long trains. Every 20-30 minutes it seems. I can here a train whistle right now as I write this post. All traveling both ways right along the river to wherever they are going. I’m not sure I would enjoy living in some of these small river towns with trains going through continuously night and day but I suppose you get used to it.
Our record is intact – we locked through two more locks (Lock 10 and 11) all alone. The river is quiet this time of year I guess.
We were going to anchor out again tonight but after a long hot day we decided to stay in Dubuque at the new Municipal Marina. Its a wonderful facility but wasn’t finished in time for the 2012 season. Good for us since they let us stay for free. Free is good (again). We lucked out too since both the water and electrical worked at the slip so, except for no bathrooms, showers and other amentities, we are living the high life tonight. A nice end to a long, hot, windy day.
