To all my blog followers - sorry for the many missed days. We were in the internet and marina free zone between Grafton, IL and Paducah, KY. A few small glitches but doing well. Tonight will be a lot of photos to recover from 5 days offline. It has been hot and now we are dealing with morning fog on the river - usually burns off by 9:00 AM. When you don't have a marina it is very muddy trying to walk dogs. Storm decided to jump out of the dinghy before Brett or Lez got in the first time and had to be hauled back onto the swim platform. Just part of the fun.
Grafton had a nice marina with mostly covered slips.
Confluence of the illinois and the Mississippi.
Looking back at the confluence with 10 feet of water on the chart - scrubbed bottom.
Bluffs by Alton, IL.
ridge at Alton.B
Crazy amount of tugs - I think this is from St Louis harbor - 12 miles of just crazy beehive of commercial activity.
Go left down the chain of rocks canal.
Chain of Rocks canal leads to the last lock on the Illinois - Chain of Rocks lock - catchy name.
They put us in with a tow.
And then squeezed in a tug.
And rotated him sideways.
Immediately below the Chain of Rocks lock is the Merchants Bridge which brother Fred has been working on - but not as we went by.
They were replacing the missing span with a 9 million pound truss.
Ditto.
Truss sitting on barges waiting to be jacked into position.
Big coming into St Louis.
Gateway arch St Louie.
St Louis harbor often ha 14 AIS targets pinging at one time.
Wing dams are high and dry.
Up current barges throw a huge wake.
Ray is going solo on the loop.
He had an asian carp jump into his dinghy - didn't smell good when he found it a day or 2 later.
Hoppies gas stop - had power , water and fuel.
Property next to Hoppie's. The Anheuser's lived there until the flood of 1993.
Ditto.
View from the Anheuser deck.
River side.
View of Hoppie's dock from Anheuser.
God's morning paintbrush from Hoppie's.
Anheuser from the river.
Morning fog about to burn off.
Chevron dykes.
Anheuser and Hoppie's.
Kaskaskia Lock dog walk in the morning fog.
Got thicker as the morning went on.
Sun finally started burning through about 8:30.
Chester maximum security prison.
Running best fuel efficiency down the MS.
Fred's bridge at Cape Girardeau.
Mural going up.
Fred and I climbed to that bow tie in a high wind during construction - all I wanted as far as height.
6 foot plus rooster tails.
Sunset at Little River Diversion canal - Cape Girardeau.
Little River diversion.
Morning barge coming out of the fog during our dog walk.
Dropped the dinghy motors keg directly on my bare foot - that didn't feel good.
Little River Diversion Canal - we got to 2.7 feet and turned around.
Still looks funny loading one end at a time and seeing the first below water and the second end out of the water.
Barges as far as the eye could see.
Lots of tugs going into Paducah.
Cairo harbor was a beehive today too.
Olmsted lock.
Paducah was crazy too.
Paducah transient dock - our home for the next 2 nights.
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