Day 2 - Red Wing, MN to Lacrosse, WI

Today was the worst dam day. We traveled nearly 100 miles and had to pass through locks at 5 dams. This will be the most in one day on the Mississippi and we'll only see this again on the much kinder and gentler Tenn-Tom Waterway.  The river was busy too with much boat traffic from the Fourth of July weekenders.  All sizes and varieties of boats doing all sorts of activities were to be found everywhere. I'm still amazed at the number of large cruisers that move along well over 30 mph producing huge wakes in their trail. I'm glad I'm not fueling those things with my wallet. I crossed the wake of one such cruiser and in misjudging my speed, caused a good amount of water to surge up and over our bow. That cinched it for Mary, she strapped on her life jacket and didn't remove it the rest of the day.  The water spray was really a nice relief from the warm day and in the breeze we dried out in a matter of minutes. The wind was strong out of the south too creating a good headwind that added to our typical 25mph cruising speed.  My hat blew off more times than I could count but the tether line attached to my collar reliably saved it.

Let's start in with some pictures. Here are two that I'm presenting as a set of, "before and afters".  Look close to see if you can tell what's different between the two pictures.  Hint:  There's an orange thing in the first picture that's missing in the second.

This is the Blue Fin as it left Watergate Marina in St Paul on July 4.     

This is the rear of the Blue Fin near Wabasha, MN on July 5.

OK,  if you have a good eye you noticed the orange gas tank is missing.  That's right! It's floating somewhere in the Mississippi River with about 4 gallons of gas in it.  I'm guessing that someone is going to have a nice day when they find a $100 gas tank with $15 of gas in it.  I'm sure it will be intact and usable unless it gets hit by another boat.  I only know of where it might be within a range of about 40 miles so there's no hope of me having the nice day. But I don't want you to conclude that I'm dwelling only on the negatives of the day. Look at these fun scenes below:

Busy loading things on board as we prepare to leave Red Wing, MN

Nothing's finer than a peaceful morning on the river.

Mary at the controls in Winona, MN

Keeping us off the wall while inside the locks.
Liquid Assets ahead of us proudly announced they were going all the way to Dubuque.  Don't worry, we were humble.

If someone lost their houseboat we found it.
This was in the news a few weeks ago and I believe it was swept under a raised roller gate of a dam, tipped over, and swamped. All were OK.

Tomorrow we move on to Clayton, IA.   What's there you ask?  We're not sure either but we'll let you know.