Day 7 - Muscatine to Ft Madison, IA

In Muscatine we put the Blue Fin in the city marina and then had a 2.5 mile bike ride to and from the motel. We stayed at a Super 8 out on the west side of town as there wasn't anything downtown near the river. It was hot and busy on the streets during our evening "commute" to the motel and I dumped the Burley bike trailer over twice. No serious damage was done but because of this I decided to have a discussion with Mary about what I perceived to be a weight problem with our luggage. It seemed to be easily transportable in the earlier days of our trip but it was now becoming more difficult. I think I had a hunch about the cause of this and at the motel I discovered she was carrying food and wine bottles and all matter of other prohibited items. We did have that discussion and now the weight is back down to a manageable level.

This is the river front of Muscatine IA.

A nice enough place but too bad we couldn't find any lodging downtown.

The walkway to the docks at the Muscatine City marina.
The water level is still high in this area and everyone is
more than pleased that it's now dropping about 6 inches per day.
I could have made it out to the railings but the water
would have been almost up to my knees.
No problem though as there was another walkway where some aluminum walk planks were setup to allow for temporary dry passage.

I received a text message from an acquaintance and in it he was telling me of his flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta. He swore he saw a red dot floating in the Mississippi as he flew over and wondered if it could possibly be my lost gas tank. They say when you're annoyed with someone's behavior that you should ignore them or else risk encouraging them if you should confront them. I decided on the former approach.

Let me run through a couple of interesting photos I took today:

 I was told to be on the lookout for hillbillys when I get to the south.  I'm putting this photo up to prove that the south doesn't have exclusivity on hillbillys. You can find them anywhere. This place doesn't set the record for the condition of run down shacks we've seen but it was in a handy place to get this shot. A real fixer upper.

In contrast to the shack above, this place has a cool spiral staircase up to a platform with room for a few chairs. A perfect perch for a flood.

If you promised to take the kids to the water park this year then here's a place where you can save a lot of money.  Shot from the boat sitting in about 9 feet of water near Keithsburg, IL.
I've learned to be careful as I approach the shore in places such as this since the many walls and barriers that are built up around the waterfronts are now just a few feet under water. In this scene what you cannot see is a sidewalk and landscape wall that run along the edge of the riverfront. Picture if you could a normal river level, the stone rip-rap wall rising maybe 8 feet, then a short wall and sidewalk on top. My boat can easily go from 10 feet or more of depth to hitting a submerged wall in as little as 10 to 20 feet of forward movement. 

I can't decide if this photo has any scenic value of if it's just junk. This sunken tug is upstream of Burlington, IA in a back channel. It appears to have been here a long time judging from the rusted  pilot house. We've seen a lot of sunken barges and other abandoned equipment and I wonder why this happens. You would think those responsible would be obligated to clean up their messes. Now I'm not a big fan of imposing rules on people but do they have no shame?  In fact, I think shame is a lost emotion and will maybe make a comeback someday. Think of it this way. What would the grandmother of the guy who runs the company that left this sunken barge in the river think of him? I bet she wouldn't be boasting to her friends about him but would instead be grabbing him by the ear and telling him to clean this up.  Maybe a nicely constructed sign placed tastefully on the junk, shaming the company and owners, would be a good way to carry on where grandma left off.

A place in the shade for a lunch break. This shelter is on the waterfront in New Boston, IL. with the Blue Fin in the background.

A bridge to nowhere.
This abandoned railroad bridge makes an abrupt ending into the main channel of the river.  The Corps of Engineers has now placed a navigation marker on the last pier so at least it still has some use.

Let's talk for awhile about navigation. My main tool is a Humminbird 788 LCD chart navigator-fishfinder. In it is installed the Navionics North American data set that was updated in April. The chart system really helps when you're unfamiliar with the waters or in situations where the markers and land references are too distant.

The two rows of markers indicate where the green and red buoys lining the channel are located. The view on the screen represents a horizon that's about 1/2 mile distant. My eyes can usually see one marker beyond what appears on the screen. My actual position is indicated by the boat symbol running, as it should, between the buoys. A trail marking my path is drawn behind me as I travel. How accurate is this?  Pretty darn good.  The buoy markers on the screen and the actual buoy are usually within 50-100 feet of their actual position in the river. If it were not for other boats, barges, and floating debris it would be fun to navigate using only the screen to see how far you could get without looking up to view the world with your eyes. A method airplane pilots call "under the hood". Mary likes to use the chart system when she's piloting because she doesn't have to bother me much about directions and it surely gives better advice than I would anyway. I also told her that if I drop over board or just plain drop over, and she is calling for help to use those little N and W numbers down in the lower right corner if they ask here where she is.

You can see the speed, heading, and long-lat position too. The temperature indicator is of the water and not the air. It was fun to watch the water increase in temperature from 73 degrees near St Paul to where it is now in the 80 degree range. And lastly, the big number in the upper left is the water depth.

Tonight we're in Ft Madison, IA and staying at the Kingsley Inn. It's a convenient arrangement with the marina and inn only 4 blocks apart.  We didn't feel it necessary to unload the bicycles but we did make use of the Burley trailer as a hand cart.

Tomorrow we really need to make an effort to get some miles behind us. We have a choice of making it through 4 dams tomorrow and then 3 the next day or vice a versa. The bottom line is we need to knock off seven dams by Friday or we won't make it to St Louis over the weekend. Our stopping point tomorrow should be in the Hannibal to Louisiana, MO stretch.