Monday September 6, 2021.
Temp: 88/65, Humidity: 31/81%, Top Wind: SW12 mph, Precip: None- sunny, Miles Traveled: none
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It was a mass exodus this morning as all of the time travelers bugged out. We just watched as they kept leaving and the marina quieted down.
I took the opportunity to do some laundry, and Kenny washed down Island Girl. It’s amazing how many spiders, webs, and bugs, and how much dirt and grime can collect! There are SOOO many spiders, and it just keeps getting worse the closer to fall we get. Every day, we think we kill “the one that made that web”, and then there is another web tomorrow in the same place. We are ready for Halloween without even trying! 🕷🕸
The water here on the Mississippi is muddy and brown, with a lot of wood products floating around. These little turtles found a place to sunbathe. They are lil guys, about the size of the palm of your hand.
Since I don’t have any scenery pictures or crazy adventures to share, here is a map of what is coming up in the next few days. Wednesday will be two locks here in St Louis, and a total of 86 miles from here to a lock wall on the Kaskaskia River where it flows into the Mississippi River. There is no town there and no power, and you cannot leave the lock wall, which sticks out like a jetty in the river, but it is a good place to tie up. Thursday will be just 68 miles to a really good anchorage that is in a side tributary off of the River. The key with traveling and staying over night on the rivers is that you want to be far as possible off the main channel to avoid all of the commercial traffic. These are two places that we used in 2018 that were safe and where there wasn’t a bunch of wood products flowing by or on the bottom that can foul the anchor or clunk the boat. Friday will be a LOOONNNG 95 mile day with one lock, finishing the Mississippi section and turning upstream on the Ohio River, stopping in Paducah Kentucky. We’ll stay there two nights, then move on to Green Turtle Bay Resort on Barkley Lake for four nights to recouperate.
With all of the boats that have left, we sort of have a view of the sunset. But I’ll only take a picture from inside the boat, because when I open the door, we get bugs inside. 🪰. Then we have to have a swat party and try to determine if we’re really seeing bugs or just regular ol’ optical floaters. 👀
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Tuesday September 7, 2021.
Temp: 89/66, Humidity: 38/83%, Top Wind: SW15 mph, Precip: None- sunny, Miles Traveled: none
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Today was warmer, and really quiet! The whole dock across from us is completely empty… 30 slips are empty just on that dock. There are empty spots on the other docks too. Yep – this place was crazy busy for the holiday weekend!
We even ventured to the pool for awhile, and there was only one other couple there. There was music playing and it was really nice to pretend that we’re on vacation somewhere…. in Illinois. 😉
This is why we are still here today, and why we will be traveling the next three days. We want to catch the three days of under 90 degrees for travel and the two cooler nights for when we’ll be without air conditioning. This is the stuff that navigators do.
Every once in awhile, we see updates about Covid travel restrictions. We don’t watch the news on TV, but sometimes you can’t avoid noticing what’s going on. One of those sources is Facebook for travel destinations that I subscribe to. I really wanted to take Island Girl to the Bahamas in the early Spring of 2022, but their Covid restrictions have always been tough. Not impossible, but a pain in the butt, especially for boaters who travel around. Right now with the increase in global cases, they don’t seem to differentiate between vaccinated or not, and want negative tests before and after arrival in EACH island group! We’d be testing all the time, since we’d go from the U.S. and then to maybe five different island groups and back to the U.S. in a six week period. Grrr. So, I was thinking about other options and bucket list destinations for late winter/early spring travel. Costa Rica popped into my head. Yes! That would be fun! Just go rent an Airbnb for a month? Why not?! They (currently) have very reasonable travel rules. 👍 So, I ordered a Fodor’s book from Amazon that was supposed to be here two days ago. It still isn’t here. 🤷♀️. Might have to reorder it for delivery to the next marina. 😏
But hey! It’s not just me! Another Looper on Dream Weaver ordered a package, and it didn’t come as scheduled, and they even stayed an extra day. It still didn’t come, so they left this morning. Guess what? It came this afternoon. So the dockmaster came to us and asked if we were headed the same place (knowing that we’re loopers and there isn’t much choice on where to go from here) – and if we’d be willing to take it if that was OK with Dream Weaver. He got ahold of them and asked, and I sent them a text and told them our itinerary and that we’d be glad to bring it along. They were appreciative and said yes, so we’ll take it and likely meet up with them at Green Turtle. The looper connection! We haven’t met them yet, but we will soon!
Tonight is an early to bed night, since we’re getting up before the sun tomorrow. We’ll be ready to pull lines at 6:30. The Mel Price lock is only 1.5 miles from here. I’ll check the River Lock queue website and see what I can see. Kenny will radio the lock and check the status, and then we’ll get a move on.