Day 10: Friday, September 14, 2012
Underway: 7:54 am Motor Off: 3:45 pm Miles Traveled: 42 Stayed At: Marina
First Things First: First time we stirred up the mud on the bottom (coming into the Muscatine Municipal Marina; first meal eaten that we didn’t bring with from home (center cut bacon wrapped pork chops, red potatoes, green beans and honey crisp apple); first water taxi near Moline, IL
Mile 497 to Mile 455: “Sunny and glorious”. That is what the voice on the NOAA weather broadcast, on the VHF radio, forecast for today and he was right. It brings back memories from our trip from Bayfield, Wisconsin to New York City (on this same boat with two kids and a dog) in the summer of 2002 – the year after 911. We had the time of our life. The girls were at the perfect age to help out and learn but be willing to be away from home and friends for a whole summer. I still have the weather broadcasts from that trip imprinted on my brain – we listened intently to them every day and nearly every day ended up pretty much the same. “Sunny and warm with a 20% change of thunderstorms in the evening and mist”. It turned out that we only had a 2% chance of rain since it only rained 3 times the entire summer and only once during the day. More about that trip in later posts. The pictures at the bottom of the page are some of the thousands we took that summer.
What a difference a day makes. Today was another nice day on the river – quiet, warm and sunny. We are staying at the Muscatine Municipal Marina for the night. Muscatine used to be the pearl button capital of the world. They harvested tons of clams and cut millions of buttons out of the shells.
Our record is still intact through Lock #16 – we still haven’t shared a lock with any other boats. Millions of gallons of water has poured in and drained out just to let little old Aurora drop down 10—15 feet to the next pool of water on the Mississippi. The lock operators have an interesting job. Lots of slow times, busy times during summer weekends and some real excitement dealing with huge tows and tugs in between. They definitely have to have patience since everything needs to happen slowly or bad things can happen. It’s fun to chat with them when they aren’t too busy – which has been the case most of the time we have locked through.
Did you know time takes on a new meaning while traveling at 5.8 mph? You look for new measures to mark the passage of time on a trip like this – miles on the chart, the next daymark, the next red or green buoy, time to eat, sunrise and sunset, when is the next gas stop – the clock only really matters at the beginning of the day and end of the day (usually because we are including it as part of this blog). What “time” it is doesn’t usually matter.
In Passing: Today we passed by Arsenal Island, Horse Island, Turkey Island, Goose Island and Indian Island (among dozens of others named and unnamed). Drury Slough, Andalusia Slough, Velie Chute, Rock River, Le Claire Canal and Lake Potter all passed by without much notice. All sharing the same watershed and draining to the same place sooner or later – the Gulf of Mexico. Someday we will learn the difference between a chute, slough, canal and lake on the Mighty Mississippi.
FYI: Daymarks are red and green markers usually on or near shore that guide boats on the river down the channel and around key turns and bends in the river. They usually have a small sign listing the mile marker where you are on the river. Before GPS, they were an important measure for plotting your location. We use them to keep track of our progress and to mark the passage of time.