Home Sweet Home

The beautiful scenery and clear skies continued through our final three cruising days.


We still had a few locks to go through, but we had no delays.

During the trip, we wondered if we would still appreciate our home cruising grounds after all we saw. In fact, we were asked more than once, usually by the "salt water" boaters, if people really boated on the Upper Mississippi. We tolerate a short season, locks and trains, but are rewarded with beautiful scenery, daily bald eagle sightings, no crowds, and friendly towns.

On the shores of Lake Pepin, we stopped to visit long time friends and Gold Loopers Mark and JoAnn and were treated to a fabulous dinner and great conversation.

Our final stop was Treasure Island Marina located on a beautiful backwater above Lock 3. We filled up the fuel tank for the last time and tied up at the mostly empty transient dock.

Later that evening, Larry arrived in WyLaWay, a 25' Rosborough in which he and his wife completed the Loop a few years ago. We enjoyed meeting him and having more "Looper Chat".

The Army Corps of Engineers is doing a major revision of the upper approach to Lock 3. They were hard at work loading sand from this huge pile of dredgings and bringing it to the construction site for fill.

As we neared home, the welcoming party aboard the Spirit of 76 appeared ...

... with neighbors Mark and Cheryl and Mark's parents Bob and Rose aboard.

Mark took excellent care of our lawn, plowed the snow, and kept watch over our house while we were gone and it all looked great as we approached. Thanks Mark !!

Lucy didn't want to come up to the house at first, so we went up without her and found a bucket of mail and welcome home package from Sue and Ron, who managed our mail all year. Thanks Ron !! Our friend Debbie gave us a most welcome going away present last year ... she cleaned our house the day before we arrived home and it looked great ... what a treat to come home to a clean house. Thanks Debbie !!

Here are few statistics from our trip:

• miles traveled: 6705 miles
• locks transited: 148
• fuel purchased: 2111 gallons
• average fuel consumption: 3.2 mpg (with generator use) or 2.13 gallons per hour (gph)
• gone 347 days and traveled 181 of those days (52%)
• averaged 37 miles per travel day at an average speed of 6.8 mph
• stayed in marinas 181 nights (52%)
• anchored out 86 nights (25%)
• tied to free docks (including Erie Canal walls) 26 nights (8%)
• floated on mooring balls 14 nights (4%)
• spent 28 nights at the rented house at Cudjoe Key (8%)
• tied to Canadian Park canal walls 11 nights (3%)
• visited 20 states and one Canadian Province
• stayed within our budget of $100/day overall
• had only one significant mechanical problem (never had to be pulled out)

We've been home for almost a week now and are adjusting to "life after looping". Our house feels like a mansion and we love the daily conveniences like a car, big frig, our own laundry and unlimited water and electricity ... and watching the Twins on HD. We're looking forward to attending our first game at Target Field, thanks to nephew Jim and Pam.

It truly was the "trip of a lifetime" and writing the blog has been very fun for me (Liz). We've enjoyed all your comments and e-mails and we were glad that we could share some of it with you. If you want to read more about the loop, visit http://www.greatloop.org/ and you can find a list of other public looper blogs to read ... and if you dream of looping, go for it. Safe cruising to all !!!

Minnesota !!!

After exiting the lock at the Quad Cities, we waved good bye to great Looper friends, Tom and Diann (Noah Genda), as they headed for Lindsay Park Yacht Club to make their triumphant return.

We had stayed the previous night at the Muscatine Municipal Marina. There was no one at the gas dock to pay, thus beginning a string of six "free dock" nights.

In the Quad Cities, we stayed at Isle of Capri Casino Marina ... no charge for dockage, but paid $10 for electric ... also ate a good $11 buffet at the Casino.

Although the current had let up a bit, we had three days of strong south winds. During the worst of it, sustained winds were up to 25 mph and gusts to 35. The autopilot has a difficult time steering the boat in following seas and that's what we had ... a disadvantage of the single engine ... the human pilot and first mate didn't like it very much either.

Since then, however, we've had a great run of mostly sunny days with cool nights. At Sabula, we found this small public dock available, but the ramp to shore was missing ... we stayed anyway.
With all the great new places we've visited in the past year, we almost forgot about the beauty of the upper Mississippi. The shoreline is mostly undeveloped except for the small towns and a little industry. It is unfortunate that most Loopers experience the Mississippi only on the stretch from the Illinois River to the Ohio River intersections, not the most cruiser friendly segment. It's alot different on the upper Miss, but it's a long "side trip" and not many cruising boats come up here. There are few pleasure boats after Labor Day and the barge traffic has also diminished so we are pushing through the remaining locks in a timely manner ... eat, sleep, drive.

We had locked through behind this graceful tour boat during one of the strong wind days. We provided a little entertainment for the passengers as we worked to keep the boat on the lock wall. Steve kept the engine running in reverse, but we still were holding onto our ropes with all we had. The next day, they passed us going back downstream in calmer waters.

In Dubuque, we stopped at the "Ice Harbor", where entrance is through these double gates into the man made basin. The town is protected from high water by a tall levy and the gates can be closed to complete the barrier during a flood.

Along with a few commercial boats and USCG boats, there are 24 brand new slips, no charge, mostly empty. The very new National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium is adjacent to the Harbor, so we paid a visit. We've been in many museums on this trip and this one rates among the top we've seen. Very interactive and high tech, with all sorts of exhibits about our river system. The humongous blue cat fish in the aquarium are absolutely worth the price of admission ... we couldn't see it all in the two hours we had left until closing.

The museum is at MM 579.5. These day markers are alot bigger than they appear to be when you pass them in your boat.

The William M. Black is an old steam powered dredge boat that can be toured at the museum.

There are also 3D theaters, a working boat shop, and several more exhibits that we'll have to return to at another time. After a walk through town and a dinner aboard, we let Lucy out for her evening exploration, from which she always returns ... but this time she didn't. We searched for an hour and it was getting dark. Out on the dock, we both heard a faint little "meow", then heard it again. We hung our heads over the dock and there she was, wet from her fall in the water. but she had rescued herself by climbing up onto the black plastic floats under the dock. What a relief to find her and pull her out ... that was the evening I was going to blog, but couldn't get it done after the stress of not being able to find our loyal boat kitty. The next day was a little cloudy as the gorgeous high rock bluffs that are prominent in the river banks above Dubuque started to appear.

We passed by this concept boat that has been built by http://www.rivercitiescondos.com/ as a single condo model for their grand dream. They want to build a boat of individual condos that will cruise the river systems year round and are traveling the rivers to promote their interesting idea. Maybe we can all sign up after we are unable to pilot our own boats ...

Next stop was in Guttenberg, one of our favorite towns. Last fall, they had started building their municipal marina and now it's done, so we grabbed a slip and went in search of someone to pay. We ended up at City Hall where we learned that overnight dockage is FREE this year since it's so new. It's a dandy little marina.

Last night brought us to Lansing, last town in Iowa, where we pulled up to this concrete wall and tied off for the night. The historical building is a little inn.

This morning we were allowed to lock through between two single tows heading upstream, very nice.

We stopped tonight at the Sunset Marina in Trempealeau, WI to visit Joe on his Lord Nelson Tug. Joe and Arvilla did the Loop a few years ago, so it was fun to share stories with him. As Steve was walking down the dock, one of the guys at the Saturday night dock party asked him where he was from. When he answered "Minnesota", the guy said, "you didn't come very far". Steve paused and said, "well, actually....."

Mississippi MM 404.5

As soon as we turned the corner into the Mississippi, we knew it was going to be a long, slow haul. The current was about 2.5 to 3 mph, so our SOG (speed over ground) was reduced to 5 to 5.5 mph ... a 30% reduction in our baseline speed, which is pretty slow to begin with. The water has been high on this stretch since June, and everyone we met told us it was almost back to normal, but the current persisted for the first four days of our upstream trek. With the high water and swift current, the river bottom has been rearranged and is shoaling all over the place. We saw this Army Corps of Engineers dredge at work bringing the channel back to its 9 foot depth so the tow boats can get through.

We waited 2 hours at both of the 2 locks we went through the first day. Along with a fuel stop, we traveled only 40 miles in 11 hours ... a new record of slowness. At the first 4 locks we went through, the dam gates were all wide open, sending as much water downstream as possible. Those locks normally have a 10-15 foot lift, but we only went up about 6 inches in each of them. The second day we heard a Coast Guard announcement on the radio that the river was "closed" due to dredging at mile 305. The announcements of areas being dredged usually say "mariners should transit with caution", so this was a concern ... would they let us through? As we approached the "closed" section the next day, we saw these 4 double tows pushed to the side waiting to transit.

We called the dredge boat on the VHF and received our instructions on where to transit the area ... whew !! They were dredging with a "scoop", unusual on the river, it must have been quite shallow as the scoop didn't look like they were dropping it too deep into the water.

After each barge was filled with "spoils", a smaller tow boat hauled it away.

We had heard that the Des Moines River was the main source of all the extra water coming down. The Des Moines joins the Mississippi just below Keokuk ... as we approached, the current increased another mph. Now we were really crawling, and as we passed the mouth we were pushed sideways as the Des Moine emptied its water into the Mississippi. At Keokuk, there is a highway bridge, a RR bridge with low clearance that we needed to open and then the doors to the lock. The lock is also unique as it is 1200 feet long (most of the other Mississippi locks are 600 feet) so that a double tow can go through all at once. It also has a high lift of 38 feet.

Above the lock is this hydro electric plant, one of the few on the Mississippi.

Keokuk Lake is a wide area of the river and the home of the Keokuk Yacht Club, our destination for the night. A very active bunch of boaters, they were celebrating their "Summer's Over Bash" with a steak fry and a live band. It's definitely one of the best boating stops on this section of the river. Looper friends Tom and Diann (Noah Genda) were also there with family aboard for the weekend and we all enjoyed a good steak dinner.

Tonight we are in Burlington, IA, another one of the places we stopped last fall on our way down. Here's the downtown as seen from the river. It's a cute little river town, but we probably didn't fully appreciate its charm last fall ... this was the place where we had our one and only breakdown ... stuck for a week in 40 degree temperatures.

The weather is perfect and with "normal" current, we are traveling at 7 mph. Burlington marks about one third of the way ... started from ~ mile 200, now at ~ mile 400 and home is mile 830 ... so we're still aiming for mid-September.