State #3!

We had a whirlwind visit home for less than 24 hours where we managed to pack in our required business, an AWESOME Sharon Shannon concert at The Celtic Junction (Thanks Tom Lockney for the ticket), visiting time with Tony’s mom and traded out some items we had on the boat that we realized were extraneous for some warmer clothing items that have already come in handy.  To our surprise we found we couldn’t sleep in our own bed now that we’re used to our palatial V-berth!

We were socked in by the fog this morning in LaCrosse and so did not get underway until after 10:30 once it burned off.  Since we’re likely to have lots of fog over then next month or so while we have very cool nights and warm days, we promise we won’t constantly post pictures but we couldn’t help ourselves this morning.

We clocked our longest travel day thus far on the loop with 34 miles to Lansing, IA and you’ll see in the coming days that we’re done monkeying around.  Much of the land outside of the shipping channel was marshland and we saw countless pelicans and seagulls, often hanging out together, along the way.  I have always associated both of those birds with the ocean but I now know that it is the brown pelican that lives on salt water and appeared in Finding Nemo and the American White Pelican that inhabits inland rivers all over North America in warm weather. 

The sun peeked out sparingly on our voyage through some beautiful rugged terrain.

We were able to enjoy the river with very few human sightings until we got to Lock 8 at Genoa, WI where we had to wait for two separate barges to get through before they could lock us down.  At first we then started to play leap frog with the tugs (here we are leaving the dredging barge in our “wake”) 

until a thunderstorm passed over just as we were approaching our stop for the night Lansing, IA.

requiring us to slow down and dock at the marina in the only 30 minutes of downpour we saw all day.  The poor marina manager ended up getting as soaked as we were in the deluge that lasted just long enough for us to arrive and get tied up. In the end we made it to Iowa safely and looking forward to an even longer travel day tomorrow.