The rest of the trip to Rockport was pretty uneventful. We had two locks to go through and they were both open and waiting for us. Finally we had a day without battling tows with 12-15 barges. We have seen hardly any other pleasure boats other than those sitting in marinas, so we pretty much have the river all to ourselves. We are always in the locks be ourselves, so the lock guys more often than not will just let us float out in the middle without having to grab on to the lines. This will all change, of course, once we reach the mouth of the Illinois River where a lot of the Great Loopers are going south.
We passed through a very interesting dredging operation which is pictured above. We actually had to wait a while for them to separate the floating pipe that carries the slew across the river. The pictures above hopefully show how some of this works.
We also passed by the historic village of Hannibal, MO, home to Mark Twain. It was quaint, but can't say it looked all that much different than dozens of other little towns that dot the shoreline.
We pulled into Two Rivers about 1:00, a little ahead of our schedule, so Jeff and I spent time walking around the marina until the staff arrived at 2:00 (they have a "flood season" schedule right now). Staff is very friendly and helpful, just what you would expect from a "five anchor" marina. They loaned us the "marina courtesy van" so we could run some errands. This involved driving the Dodge Caravan with 170,000 miles across an extremely narrow bridge across the Mississippi into the town of Louisiana, MO to visit the smallest WalMart in the U.S. (no kidding). I have been in corner drugstores that were larger than this store. Krogers was the other stop - the only grocery in the county.
The boat won't be hauled until tomorrow morning, since that is when "Mark the Mechanic" shows up. I will post a picture of their travel lift tomorrow, so hold your breath!
No comments:
Post a Comment