October 13, 1999:
Yes, we stayed another day at Alton. Those hot tubs just can't be beat. Today a grocery store sent a car, a Cadillac, no less to get us so we could go shopping. Talk about first class, this marina is first class all the way. Mark put the letters (Racine, WI) on the back of our Sankaty; now we are legal. Tonight we are going to go to Fast Eddy's for supper. They have large shrimp from a raw bar for only 25 cents each. They also send someone to take you to the restaurant. We went to Fast Eddy's with George and his crew. George is a 72-year-old gentleman who lost his wife about 4 1/2 years ago. He said that he spent the first year moping, the next year taking 9 major trips all over the world and exhausting himself. The next year he bought a boat and since then has been motoring the rivers to Florida. We had a good time hearing his stories and eating shrimp and steak kabobs. They had good French fries too. Came home took a hot tub and slept soundly rocked to sleep by the river.
October 14, 1999:
We took our last hot tub this morning shortly after the sun peeked its head from under the large suspension bridge. Within 10 minutes we had a lock to maneuver, the Melville Lock just south of Alton. We headed toward St. Louis today. There is a large canal called Chain of Rocks Canal that was cut to keep boats off of a section of the Mississippi that is dangerous due to rapids. We will negotiate that and then have another lock at the end to transverse before entering the Mississippi again. I'm planning tacos for lunch. Getting into the canal wasn't as easy as we thought. The Mississippi has quite a current and really didn't want to let go of us. We had to fight all the way to get into the canal, and there was a large barge coming out at the same time as we were trying to go into the canal, but we finally made it.
Almost made a near fatal mistake today. We planned on staying at Marina De Gabouri but when we reached it, almost at dusk, no one was there, even though the guidebook said that it was open year round with 8 feet draft. In this emergency we tied up to a barge by the side of the river as the sky darkened. After dark, a tugboat with another barge told us that we could not dock there; they were moving the barge that very evening up river. Thank heavens another tugboat was going to the Kaskaskia River Locks and lit our way all the way where we could tie up for the night. I had to steer while Mark, with a flashlight looked ahead and told me a little to the left or right as we made our way down the river after the tugboat; almost like a blind man walking down an alley using his cane to detect obstructions. We made it and met a very nice man, Miller, who let us tie up on his boat. He had a large trawler and seeing we were rather dazed gave us fresh, warm, homemade pizza. What a guy! I continue to be amazed at the generosity of river folk. In return we gave him beer and some apple-walnut breakfast bread with maple frosting. They seemed pleased.
October 15, 1999
In the morning we head back down the river. Hopefully tonight we can find a sleeping spot early.
We anchored for our the first time today. We stopped early and anchored in a small diversion channel just south of Cape Girardeau. The water was about 6 feet down the channel and since we have a 5-foot draft, we decided it would work. The wind whistles through the treetops and without the motor on it is so peaceful. I watched a large bird that I couldn't identify for a long time. It stood so still for so long that I wondered if I might be imagining that a stick was a bird, but after an hour I went to look again and "my stick bird" was gone. A couple of good old boys came by drinking and fishing for catfish, they left saying that if they caught a mess of catfish they would bring us some. By nightfall we had three other boats for company, all larger motor trawlers, one we saw before on the river, Gypsy Soul, captained by Peggy and John out of Caseville, MI.
We decided to sleep in the cockpit with our oil lamp hanging off the mast. Well after dark, Dave and Gene, the two good old boys came back with huge catfish for us. We tried to get them into 2-gallon plastic bags but they got away from us and were flopping in the bottom of the cockpit. One of them said, "You all know how to dress this fish don't you". I said I knew how to dress little perch and blue gill but not a whopper channel cat. They laughed and dress them for us. We talked for a while as Dave instructed us how to fillet a channel cat. We have three huge catfish and decided to bake them in the oven that night. The song Proud Mary says, "people on the river are happy to give", and that sure is right. I've never had such fun just talking to strangers, and learning local knowledge from the people who live here. As they left Dave said, " I'm going to go swamp me a boat". He was referring to the big cabin cruisers parked with us in this channel. Apparently, these boats swamped them earlier when they were fishing and since Markus slowed down when we went by, they came to pay their respects and show us some real southern hospitality. Super guys! After some baked catfish, which absolutely melted in our mouths, we went to sleep under the stars.
October 16, 1999:
We anchored again tonight, just upstream from Cairo, Illinois on the Ohio River. We slept in the cockpit, which is our habit when anchoring. About 11:30 PM we woke up as the boat was floating down the river dragging its anchor. The depth meter read 12 feet one second and 2.3 feet the next. After seeing this happen a few times but not grounding, we reasoned that the anchor line was wound around the keel and was tripping the depth alarm. We finally got it unwound and went back to sleep.
October 17, 1999:
Mark's Birthday: We hope to make it to Green Turtle Resort on Barkley Lake so we can celebrate Mark's birthday in style. We left at earliest light when we headed toward the Tennessee River. Upon talking to a barge operator we discovered that the Kentucky Lake Dam had a day and a half wait and decided to take the Cumberland River to Kentucky Lake instead. The Cumberland has a lot less barge traffic than the Tennessee does. But we may not make it to the Barkley Dam until twilight and may have to tie up at the dam overnight, though Green Turtle Resort is just about 1 mile or 10 minutes more, however by then it will be dark. A restaurant meal would be great though. We did get there OK, but we had to get a lot of help navigating into the place as it has a crocked path that is not well marked and very hard to see at night, and they did have the restaurant open so we had a wonderful dinner.
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