Sunday October 3: At Hoppies - Below St. Louis

What a wild ride! The current in the Mississippi is about 5 mph so our cruising speed yesterday was about 10 mph average with the high being 12.6 mph - the fastest the boat has ever gone! It was raining when we left and very cool with overcast skies but the views were still fun. Cliffs along the river, more old casino boats and fun bridges. The real excitement of the day was at the second lock. It was VERY windy coming from behind us - making it very hard to get the boat tied to the floating bollard (this goes up and down with the water so you can just tie your boat to it). The spacing of these bollards isn't such that you can get your boat on 2 of them so the boat is tied only at the center. Makes for the back end constantly trying to move away from the wall as the wind is blowing so hard. The surprise though was that the lockmaster decided he could lock a tow through with us! It was just over 700 feet long and seemed as though it wasn't going to ever stop! Steve had the knife ready to cut our lines in case it kept coming!! But it did stop and we weren't squashed :-) The highlight of the day was passing downtown St. Louis and seeing the arch from the water - what a sight! Selah and Serona are going to go downtown to go see it while we visit with Kristi, Will, J.P. and Kaitlyn (they should be arriving shortly). The tugs are growing. The largest we've seen is a tug pushing 25 barges - each one 35 feet wide and about 200 feet long. So this tug is pushing a block of barges 3 wide and 8 long if you can imagine that. For the largest tows we'll encounter, it would be like pushing something a football field wide and 1000 feet long! The waves put out by the upbound tugs rival those of Lake Michigan and when we go over them it's like a roller coaster. Last night and tonight we are staying at Hoppies Marina which has been here since 1934. Fern (the owner) gathers all of the loopers together in the evening and gives them instructions on how to go down the river from here. Including how to call to find out if a 45 barge tug is lurking around the bend in the river (Fern said there are some tugs that can push that many at one time). She is a wealth of information and has been doing this for ??? years. Her father was originally a lamplighter on this part of the river so he would go around and fill the lamps with kerosene so the tugs could find their way in the dark (he had a particular section of the river and had to refill the lamps every 2 days).