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.