On a Mission of Discovery

In January we made a road trip to St Louis for three reasons. Mary needed to be there for work, I wanted to check on a few things for the boat trip we'll make past there in July, and my brother Nick lives there and I wanted to pay him a visit. We spent three days in the area and while Mary was busy with her work matters I occupied my time during the day touring around the area. I was particularly interested in the river as I had heard reports of record low water levels and was curious what this will mean for our trip. Barge tows have been running aground and some rumblings of closures and blockages have been appearing in the news. I don't really know if this will have a serious impact on our plans but since I was in the area I did a bit of snooping about to see for myself.

We were staying in the downtown area so it was easy to make my first stop at the river front. As it was Monday there weren't too many visitors around so I was able to cruise my car onto the wide open river apron in front of the Arch.  I walked the full length of the nearly mile long riverfront and checked for places where I felt I could make a temporary boat landing for a quick visit and to see what the low water looked like up close. Whether I actually stop here is not especially important but if I can manage it I'll surely give it try. To hang out around the Arch and get our feet on solid ground for an hour or so would provide a nice midday readjustment.

The brick sloping surface in the picture below looks halfway inviting for my small aluminum boat and I'd have no problem pulling her up onto this hard surface. Big fiberglass boats would groan in pain at the thought of it.

My car parked on the river apron in downtown St Louis

But upon closer inspection all is not as it appears. Walking down to the waterline reveals a problem. The water level is so low that the hard surface does not make it all the way to water's edge and a drop off of a few feet into rubble and rip-rap instead makes up the shoreline. It would be difficult but not impossible to find a place to land and tie off but some precautions would be in order. If I can find one of the small sandy areas I noticed then I should be able to pull in for a quick stop.

A closer inspection of the shoreline reveals a problem.
The low water condition is exposing a rough shoreline but there are a few sandy patches.
This is about as good as it gets for a comfortable landing.

This is a sculpture of Lewis and Clark.
Notice Clark's hat being held high. 

Here's some perspective on the state of the river level. I came upon the sculpture of Lewis, Clark, and dog Seaman along the riverfront next to the Eads bridge. Clark is gesturing with his hat extended above his head in this sculpture which stands about 10 feet tall. I have seen photos of this sculpture in high water conditions and it has apparently become a popular indicator of the river's water level in this area. In the photo below you'll see only the hat sticking up and out of the water.  I don't have the hard figures but my guess is the difference in river levels between the two pics is in the neighborhood of 20 feet.

See Clark's hat sticking out of the water?

This is what the river looked like in 2008 when Matt was making his jetski trip. The water being this high was the cause of the US Coast Guard ordering him off the river.

So what do you suppose is preferable, high water or low water?  In my small boat I'll take the low water conditions since the water is calm and less junk is afloat. I'll only run aground if I'm careless and get too far out of the marked channel. High water conditions make for a lot of floating debris and nasty turbulence. Water up into the trees along the shore and flowing around fixed objects is dangerous. A boat can get turned sideways and pulled under in the current flowing around and under non-moving structures. Of course the best prescription would call for normal conditions and for that I'll have to wait and see.  It's January right now and the snow cover in the northern states is below normal.  Unless things change in the next few months the river will probably remain in a low water state, and at any rate, trying to predict next summer's condition so far in advance is foolish.

Beside worrying about low water, a bigger and more important purpose I needed to fulfill was to travel to Cape Girardeau and try to find a place to stay over when I pass through next summer.  I mentioned to you in my earlier (Segment #2) post that we'll need a place about 100 miles downriver of St Louis to spend the night and I already knew there were no marinas with docking facilities anywhere for 200 miles beyond the south end of St Louis. This is farther than I can travel in one day so I need to find a place to get the boat and ourselves off the river to spend the night. To achieve this I'll need help from someone and I hope to find that help in Cape G.

On my way to Cape G I passed near a few places I was interested in checking out. The first was a boat ramp on the Meramec River. The Meramec is about 25 miles south of downtown St Louis and enters the Mississippi as a tributary. The boat launch is not located directly on the Mississippi but is roughly one mile upstream on the Meramec.  This is not a place I necessarily plan to visit on my boat trip but since I was nearby I thought it would be interesting to see what the low water conditions looked like here. I was fully expecting to see the ramp in an unusable condition but was doubly surprised to be able to walk down the ramp and halfway across the dry river bed. The ramp was short of the water by over a hundred feet and even if you could get a boat into the water here, the Meramec was too shallow for anything bigger than a canoe. This raised my concern because I'll need a functional boat ramp in Cape G. to get off the river for our overnight stay. If there's no usable ramp then I cannot get my boat out of the water and the whole stop-over thing at Cape G will not work.

A boat ramp on the Meramec River near St Louis.

I should be standing in water up to my head.

A second place I wanted to stop at on my way to Cape G is Kimmswick, MO. (Kimmswick) This little village is about 35 miles south of St Louis and is the home of Hoppie's Marina.  Hoppie's is the last marina where I'll be able to get gas until arriving in Kentucky and I'll keep the Blue Fin here overnight while I visit my brother Nick again next summer. The marina is within walking distance of the knik-knak shops of Kimmswick so Mary will like this place even though the marina is a touch more "rustic" than what she might be expecting.

Hoppie's Marina.  It's really there!

As I continued on my investigative trip and, after having seen the Meramec boat ramp, I was anxious to check if the ramp in Cape G was in usable condition. If the water is below the end of the ramp it probably won't be possible to get the Blue Fin up and onto a trailer. That will spoil my plans.

This boat ramp in Cape Girardeau makes it all the way to the waters edge.  
I was happy to see that!

I found the boat ramp in Cape G a few blocks north of the downtown area. It's a nice looking ramp and I was happy to see it was in good working condition and extended well down into the water.  I walked down the ramp and was able to see the concrete pad extend even further underwater until it faded into the brownness of the Mississippi. Satisfied that I won't have any problems here, I now directed my attention to finding someone with a boat trailer and truck to pull me out of the water next July.

I had made a list of marinas to check and was planning to see if one would be able to help me. As I started my walk back up the ramp to get on my way I'd noticed someone in a car up above in the parking lot doing what guy's often do.  They drive to a place where they can see the river and just sit and look. I don't know what this is about but I've done it myself and I doubt there's a clinical explanation. Anyway, the fellow in the car appeared friendly enough and, with a bunch of antennas sticking out of his car, I knew I'd have something in common with him.  We got to chatting about the low water conditions and mentioned my plans for next summer and the need to find help to pull my boat out.  He immediately recommended that I get ahold of Shawn at King Marine and was certain I'd find the help I was looking for without driving all over town. As King Marine was already on my list it was an easy choice to go and talk to them.

A guy named Larry in the car at the top of the boat ramp
 said King Marine was certain to help me.

King Marine in Cape Girardeau is located about 4 miles from the boat ramp.

They agreed to pull me from the river.

I found King Marine out on the southwest end of town and it appeared to be typical of many marinas I've visited before. At their service counter a young lady immediately presumed I needed a repair part and asked how she could help. I explained that I wanted to hire the marina to pull my boat out of the river and wouldn't need this help until next July. After a bit of a chit-chat and repeating my plans I presented a picture of the Blue Fin to improve the level of understanding of what I wanted. Another fellow at the counter said they had done this before for someone else and that they should be able to help me. I just need to call ahead to confirm and give them enough time to prepare. They agreed to drop me at a motel and to pick me up the next day to put me back into the river. This was the kind of service I was hoping to discover so I claimed my mission accomplished!


One last view of the river that I captured around the Kimmswick area shows a rather harsh scene. I probably had trespassed onto someone's property but I hadn't yet been able to get to a location where I could see the river like I'll be seeing it from my boat. Here was a place where I got a view of what I expect much of the river in this area to look like and what I saw was a lot of sand, gravel, and rock. This picture doesn't do justice and looses the scale of things. The smokestacks are three miles away and I marked 10 distinct wing dams that would be largely submerged in normal conditions.  Here they are standing fully out of the water and are big enough to hide a couple of houses behind. A few acres of sand lies exposed on the upstream side of each and they are devoid of any vegetation, as if they'd been excavated and freshly piled up with raw earthen material. This is not a river scene that I am used to but I'm confident I'll  manage to get us through here in good fashion next July.

I added yellow dots to mark the wing dams. 
 These dams should be mostly under water but are instead standing 10-20 feet high.
When I stood down at water level I had the feeling of being in a gravel pit.

A fun way to wrap up a visit.  
Brother Nick and me at Schlafly's Brewery. 

Oh yeah,  I said at the beginning I had three reasons for visiting St Louis.  I almost forgot about the third reason and that was to visit brother Nick and his wife Mary.  My wife Mary and I always have the best of times with them and wish we saw them more. In life we all have those who we need to visit and those who we like to visit. Nick and Mary are definitively like to's.  And yes, our wives both have the same first and last names.