Herons and Egrets and Owls, Oh My!

Greetings and Salutations from St Charles, MO (a northwest suburb of St Louis).  This is KG - pretty tuckered out from a VERY long day on the water.  We traveled just over 64 miles today. With the two locks we had to go through this day took 8+ hours.  We went through Lock 24 and 25 today - if you’re paying attention you’ll notice we didn’t go through Lock 23 since that one doesn’t exist.  You may ask yourself - Why is there a Lock 13 but not a Lock 23?  Fun fact: The Army Corp of Engineers realized when they were putting their plan into action that they didn’t need a lock at the site planned for Lock 23 and once again didn’t want to renumber the locks (see Lock 5A discussion). 

Despite our long day, we will still just spend one night here and be on our way first thing in the morning to travel to Alton, IL.  Believe it or not, Alton will be the first stop on the official “Great Loop”  since the Mississippi River north of Grafton, IL (the town just before Alton) is considered a Loop side trip.  Another fun fact: the distance we traveled today is about 1% of the total distance we’ll travel on the entire trip.

We’re settling into a pretty good routine onboard the boat.  We’ve adopted Port/Starboard duty days for getting underway and going through the locks (KG is Port and Tony is Stbd in case you’re wondering).  Otherwise we trade off driving so the other can nap, catch up on news and get things done like calling marinas to arrange for our moorings up to a day ahead, knitting, etc.  Our bluetooth speaker has been great for listening to music - same rules as the car apply - whoever is driving gets full control of the music.  We’ve been having story time on the long days, I reading short stories or articles to Tony as he drives to break up the monotony.  And crosswords are a great two-person activity when only one is able to give undivided attention.

Mostly, though, we are in awe of the scenery along the river.  We have been alone except for an occasional tow (and even rarer fishing boat) for the last several days and have been marveling at the great expanse that is the Mississippi River and the interesting flora. We encountered a couple of these trees - does anyone know the name?  Take a look at the crazy roots that stick out of the ground.

The blue heron have now become plentiful in the mix of all of the water birds and this stretch has lots of varying scenery that we can appreciate traveling at 7-8 miles an hour.  Today we had several small winged riders - here are pictures of the dragonfly and the butterfly that both hitched a ride for quite a while

I thought that the slow travel was going to be the worst part of the trip, but I’m loving it.  It gives one time to appreciate what they are seeing, and to grab the binoculars when things are far away.  The other benefit of slow living in general, is that you end up doing away with stuff you did daily that wasn’t really benefiting you since you can’t cram everything into your day.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’ll be happy to get back to my electric coffee grinder and my dishwasher, but taking the time to do things by hand that are important to you can be meditative if you have the right attitude.  

To answer a question we got recently: Once we’re done with our dinner clean-up it’s time to get the boat log updated, and plan the route for the next day.  Tony did extensive planning and research  for this entire trip, but we don’t have every day and stop scheduled because the schedule is dictated by weather and our energy level, in addition to the route. So Tony spends time every evening plotting the next day’s route once we’ve determined our short term travel plan of 1 or 2 days. We have mostly been staying in marinas on the Mississippi, though we do plan to do more anchoring as there is more interesting shoreline to explore in waters that are less commercial.  We have stayed in both municipal and privately owned marinas, but we have always called ahead to arrange for a slip.  Once we were told just take one, since at that marina the slips were first-come-first-served and free.  But, normally the slips cost $1-2/ft and usually come with electricity and water. 

We hope you’re enjoying the blog as much as we’re enjoying recording our adventure. If nothing else, I hope you’re learning some geography.  I know I am since we didn’t have that subject at St Luke’s!

Ta Ta for now.