Thursday September 9, 2021.
Temp: 80/54, Humidity: 39/94%, Top Wind: gust N14 mph, Precip: None- sunny, Miles Traveled: 111 in 8.5 hours 🚤,
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A LONG day. Yes, it was. It started out with the obnoxious sound of an alarm clock. It was barely getting light outside, but our plan was to get moving for our long day down the Mississippi. One nice thing about being tied up to a wall with no power. It makes for a really quick getaway in the morning! Just wipe down the windows, untie the lines and peel out! We don’t even make coffee until we’re under way, so it’s a little easier on the batteries. It was very peaceful and pretty outside this morning, and only about 55 degrees. We put on our fuzzies, and stealthily tootled away, leaving the other two boats to wonder what happened to us.
Thank you Kaskaskia Lock. I think it’s really a nice thing that they let us tie up here. And hey – it gives the lock tender somebody to talk to, because there was no lock traffic for the entire time we were here.
We made our way out onto the the Might Miss, and the sun was just getting ready to say good-morning.
We went past one bridge that actually had the air height showing on one of the pilings. I don’t know what is normal, but on the up-stream side, I couldn’t read any of the numbers below 60, so I think the Big Muddy can be 30 feet higher!
This was our scenry for most of the day. Other than one small town, we saw very little industry, very few loading docks for tows, very little residential, and just a few camping spots. Just trees.
We were jammin down the river! The current was giving us more than a 5mph push at times!
We only saw a couple of tows today, and this particular one was going the same direction as us. We called and requested to pass, and he wanted us on the One – which means we passed on the right. That isn’t what you might expect, but based upon the turns that he needed to make, he needed us on that side. Since it takes forever to overtake a tow, Kenny kicked us up to go-fast mode and took the opportunity to clean out Laverne & Shirley for a few minutes.
Holy smokes – we might as well enter an unlimited hydro race. Would you look at that speed? Go Island Girl, GO!
Here is the only town we saw today – Cape Girardeau. It was really only about this big. We did notice that there is a flood wall all along the river front of the town. Yes Mildred, the Mississippi River can and does flood.
Just beyond Cape Girardeau is the Little Diversion creek anchorage spot. This is it. Neither of us honestly remembered that it was anywhere near a town or any industry, but there was a lot of tow business around here! Hmm. 🤔. That does explain why we had to wait for tows to pass the last time we were here before we could leave in the morning. I looked back at my blog from then. Ohhhh – now I get it. It was cold and wet in 2018, so we actually drove from downstairs and didn’t see much scenery. Today was much nicer weather!! We had perfect little puffy popcorn clouds decorating the pretty blue sky all day long.
Around 3:00 we arrived at our destination, after 111 miles in 8.5 hours. See the pink arrow? That is where the Upper Mississippi (upper left) joins with the Ohio (upper right) and they become the “Lower Mississippi” (down). Over to the right is where we are headed tomorrow. We’ll go to the arrow and turn left, and go up the Ohio to Paducah. After that we’ll take either the Tennessee or Cumberland River to get us to the wide blue area which is the Kentucky and Barclay Lakes. More on that later.
So here we are at Boston Bar! It is a great spot!! It’s actually a small split off tributary that creates an island, so there is still some current and some debris that comes this way.
But it is well protected and well off the main river. We never saw anything less than nine feet of water depth coming in here, so we pulled in about 100 yards and dropped the anchor in 9’ of water. I put out 100’ of chain, then the bridle, so we have nearly 120’ of chain out. We’d be good in a hurricane with that kind of scope. The good thing is that with the current, we stay perfectly straight and parallel with the shoreline. The current is running at maybe 2 knots? We did hear and feel one big THUMP, and a small thump, then saw about a 20’ log swim by. At least it didnt’ get caught in the chain or bridle. We ran the genny and the a/c for awhile to cool the interior of the boat down while I fixed dinner. This spot is nice because the trees to the west of us provided complete shade by 5:00 to help cool things down. This is a way better spot than the reviews led me to believe. I will put in my own review, because at this water level, it is excellent.
We had one other boat come in and join us. They were at the lock last night as well. Thet look like they’re really close to the bridge, but they aren’t.
I’m glad this worked out because it makes tomorrow much less stressful. I don’t know how much current we’ll really have against us, but I’m not counting on going any faster than about 6.5 mph…. about half the speed of today. 😟. So we’ll get up and go in the coolness of the morning. On uncertain days, we like to go early to maximize available daylight in case we need it!