The Mighty Mississippi

We left Grafton Harbor Wednesday morning.  Jane and Larry, on Bavarian Cream, helped us cast off.  They had come in the day before and were staying one more day.  We bought fuel, our biggest fill ever-229 gallons-but our best price so far-$3.99 a gallon.

Goodbye, Illinois River

Oh, my, we are actually on the Mississippi River!  There go Tom and Huck on their river raft!  (Okay, so that was using a little imagination.)  It is a lot wider and a lot faster than the Illinois.  Tows are bigger and more numerous.  The current increased our speed by 4-5 miles an hour at the same RPM's.

Portage des Sioux, Missouri

When the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers join, you can actually see the difference in the colors of the rivers:

St. Louis looks a little different from the water than by car.

Approaching

Goodbye, St. Louis.  There is no place for recreational boats to tie up to visit St. Louis-you have to dock at a marina up- or downriver and rent a car.

There is much more commercial traffic than we realized.  Our country still moves an awful lot of product by water.  We passed and heard tow captains mention benzene, soybeans, scrap, styrene, coal, grain, petroleum products, among others.  There are barges along the rivers-many scrap, many waiting to be made into "trains" for transport.  One Coast Guard "notice to mariners" we heard here that we don't hear at home was a warning for the location of a sunken barge that may create a hazard.There are so many wrecked barges along the shores-a fortune in scrap.

Just 2 locks and we arrive at our destination for the day- Hoppie's Marine Service.  Most Loopers stop here, as it's the last diesel for 107 miles and the last gas for 228 miles as well as the last marina for 228 miles.  It has also been the first marina in about 60 miles.  The Mississippi is certainly not pleasure-craft mecca.  As our New Orleans born and raised daughter-in-law told us, "NObody boats on the Mississippi!"

The "marina" is a series of barges cabled to shore.  Fern and her husband have been running it for 35 years, they inherited it from Hoppie's father.   The first boat in line (not pictured) was Brandi IV from Toronto with Rita and John aboard.  We first met them in St. Joe, we stayed in the same marina in Chicago, and we locked through with them early on the Illinois River.  First in the picture is Tumbleweed with Linda and Floyd from Wichita.  They had just "crossed their wake" (finished the great loop).  Third in line are Julaine and Fred from Bay City.  We met them at DuSable Harbor in Chicago, locked through with them once, and watched them cruise by while we were in Grafton, IL.  Finally is Mary Frances IV, although there would be one more boat, Auk from Lake Superior.  They were rafted off the boat in front of us in Ottawa and next to us in Grafton.

Fern gathers the boaters together each day and gives advice about the rivers, anchorages, and basically what to expect all the way to Mobile Bay.  The town, Kimmswick, is the 2nd oldest town in Missouri.  It's charming and the shops and restaurants look intriguing, but everything was closed when we wandered through a little after 5.