In Alton Illinois, which is across the river from St Louis we took a break for about a week. During that time we rented a car with some new friends and visited St Louis and the Cahokia mounds state park. The mounds were amazing! It is the site of the largest Native American city north of Mexico. The people who lived there created these amazing raised cities and grew to a population of about 20,000 people. The site was beautiful with a view of the Mississippi when you climbed up to the top of the highest mound. It was amazing to think that these mounds were made by hand using baskets over a thousand years ago. Just wow!
While we were in Alton our nephew Dylan flew in to spend a few weeks helping us get down the most challenging part of the river – Mississippi River to Kentucky lake. The day that we left Alton we had to get past the Chain of Rocks Lock before going through St Louis. Each year someone, (and apparently usually a sailboat), misses the turn for the canal that leads to the lock and ends up staying straight and going through a section of the Mississippi river with rapids and waterfalls and basically death. We were all on high alert with our eyes peeled on the charts and on the river, but it was actually pretty easy to figure out. So we didn’t end up dead on the rocks as we jokingly feared. However, that wasn’t the only adventure that day. After getting through that lock there was a lot of tug traffic and it was really hard to figure out if we had enough room to pass. At one point a tug told us to go ahead, and then as we were slowly making our way past them, they radioed again to tell us that we were going to slow and we needed to get the “F” out of their way! We had to pull a sharp 180 and follow on behind them for a lot of miles.
That night we stayed at a barge on the side of the river that has been operated as a marina for over 50 years by the same family. It was literally an old barge tied up to the river bank with chains and anchors coming off it into the river that you had to avoid. All fenders required. They tied us up in front of the fuel dock…. No celebratory cigars that night. It was really interesting talking to the family and learning more about the water levels on the river and the efforts and the effects of those efforts that the Army core of engineers has been doing. They were not a fan of the wing dams on the side of the river, which they claimed were eroding the river and silting in areas that used to have more depth.
From there on the Mississippi river became increasingly more challenging. There are a lot more tows on the big river and they are pushing way more barges, like way more barges. The largest tow we saw was pushing 20 barges, each barge being approximately 100 feet long and 30 feet wide. There was also a ton of debris in the water, mostly big logs, but all manner of other garbage: ropes, bouys, construction material, fish traps, etc. Most of the time we had Dylan on the helm and me watching for debris or the other way around. Douglas was able to remote work full time down below. The most challenging part for us was when we turned from the Mississippi river upstream onto the Ohio river. It is a huge tow staging area and they were literally everywhere. All three of us had to be in the cockpit watching everywhere and trying to figure out how to stay out of the way. It was mayhem! I was on the radio about every 30 seconds maintaining communication with every tow that might be heading our way. It really worked because we started to hear them on their working channels telling other tows to watch out for the pleasure craft heading upstream.
The other big challenge was again the water level. At this point it was really scary, we had to be watching the depth sounder constantly and there were really no good anchorages. We anchored near a bridge one night which was not well protected when the wind unpredictably changed directions and became high overnight and running opposite to the direction the current was pushing us. Another night we tied up on a wall next to a lock, one night we anchored below a lock which was planning to let out a bunch of water overnight and drop the water level so we all took turns getting up overnight and checking the depth under us. We also had a frightening experience tying up to a city wall in Paducah Kentucky. The water level was really really low just outside of the dock and we had the last spot on the wall. This meant that we had a terrible angle of approach and the wind was screaming down a hill blowing us off the dock. We had people on the dock to catch lines but they had a hard time getting it cleated and the whole time the boat was churning up mud. We got it in, but it was not pretty!
After Paducah we continued up the Ohio river to the Cumberland river and went through a 58 foot lock where the river met Barkley Lake. We decided to stay for a few days at Green Turtle Bay marina in Kentucky and have a rest. From there we rented a car and went to Nashville for an overnight trip. Nashville was super fun; we heard some great music and ate some great barbeque. We also took a drive to a nature reserve and saw elk, armadillos and BUFFALO! From there we continued through to Kentucky lake and to Pebble Isle marina where we nosed through the mud to get to the dock and felt the bottom of the boat kiss the bottom with every large wake that went by. We were told that the water level was still dropping and we were pretty worried that we might be stuck there for weeks because we had to get Dylan to Memphis to catch his flight back home. It ended up okay, but it was very low!
Memphis was really awesome, a really pretty city with great food and great music. We even went to the Elvis museum which was actually really cool. Apparently Nova Scotians and even Cape Bretoners love Elvis a lot. There were both flags on his grave there! However we were sad leaving Dylan behind and facing the rest of the trip without the extra help!
To be continued…
