A busy day on the Mississippi

 Kathleen on deck again today...I keep thinking we're going to run out of interesting things to post about but not today! We had a busy day traveling from Alma, WI to Latsch Island which is in the Mississippi and connected to Winona, MN and Buffalo, WI by bridges.  

Getting to Latsch required us to pass through three locks - 4, 5 and 5A.  We easily passed through lock 4 just after we left Alma and Lock 5 around lunchtime.  Here I am at the helm floating through Lock 4.

Lock 5A was a different story. My first question today was, "why 5A?"!  It turns out that the Army Corps of Engineers set up their Upper Mississippi lock and dams numbered sequentially 1-10 and then realized they needed an additional lock between 5 and 6.  Since they chose not to renumber (costs a lot to re-sign?) they named this new lock 5A.  Which brought up my second question - do we call it 5A or 5-alpha?  (we did both on the radio).

We got to lock 5A just as a tug with 3x3 barges was coming into the lock through the downriver gate and we ended up waiting up river for 1.25 hours for the tug/barge behemoth to get into the lock which it filled COMPLETELY and then to move it out of the lock once the lock was flooded and the upriver gates were open.  We locked up with a canoe that we have been encountering since we got to Alma yesterday.  Here's a picture of the two men and their dog.  Note the deer antlers in the bow and the blue and white sail that is down in this picture:

We passed them again earlier today on the river as they were being detained by the  DNR.  It turns out you don't have to have a permit for deer antlers attached to a canoe unless they are attached to a deer scull and then attached to the canoe, as these apparently were.  The DNR issued a permit and they were on their merry way.  These guys started at the Mississippi headwaters in Itasca MN and are canoeing the entire upper Mississippi through the length of Iowa. We learned this after they caught up with us and we sat chatting and waiting for the lock to open. 

After lock 5A, it was a short 30 minute drive to our slip on Latsch Island.  We are in a lovely marina once again but all of our encounters over these past three days passing active working boaters and watching numerous people launching and retrieving their boats has led to my third question of the day: Are we the only boaters that wear PFD's?  (That question remains unanswered, but I'm leaning towards yes.)

The river was so peaceful today. The winds have died down, the leaves on the high bluffs on both sides of the river are starting to turn fall colors.  So much of the river today was surrounded by wide wetlands which gave us many bird calls and sightings of bald eagles just hanging by the river watching for fish.  These wetlands are part of a pretty large National Wildlife Refuge that Latsch Island is a part of.  So we capped off our day with a walk through a tiny portion of it.  We plan to pull out the folding bikes for the first time on the trip to explore Winona, which neither of us has visited and hang out here for an additional night.