La Crosse, WI

The combination of an all night rain and a big mayfly hatch made for quite a mess on the roof of the boat. Hunderts of dead mushy bugs.
I gave up waiting for the weather to clear, so we left our anchorage in a downpour. And fog. When we made it back out to the river channel, I thought I could see through the binoculars a southbound towboat coming our way. Then it disappeared in the rain and fog. Couldn't find it again. Thought maybe it was a ghost ship. The Mississippi River Black Pearl. Finally caught up to it and it was heading north. We raced past it (at a blazing 8 mph) in order to get to the next lock before him. The Pearl was pushing 15 barges and would need to break them apart to go through the lock which would mean a long delay for us. We arrived ahead of the Pearl and the lockmaster put us right through. The lockmasters here are far more friendly than on some other rivers.
I had called ahead to the La Crosse Municipal Boat Harbor for a transient slip. When we got here, I filled up with gas and told the dock attendant we had a reservation. He said "So you're our overnight guest. You can just tie up right there at the gas dock." You never know what to expect along the river. But we bathed indoors with hot water, topped off the fuel and water, and are charging up the batteries while running our air condioning.

We walked into La Crosse to explore and have dinner. Some of my old pals would enjoy the industry here. Home of the world's largest six-pack.

Eagles

By 1 pm today, we have seen more eagles than any single day ever. Probably a hundert. They're everywhere. Like Canada Geese at home. (Haven't seen any of them here.)
They had a great summer here yesterday. Rain today. NOAA says maybe 2". At least we have the river pretty much to ourselves today. Haven't seen a single Baja or Donzi.
In over 150 miles on the water, we've only seen 2 sailboats. Well, 1 sailboat (an O'Day) and 1 MacGregor.
The river looks to be over 2 miles wide here. However, other than the marked channel, it's too shallow to navigate. Most is covered with lilly pads. The farther north we go, the more bluffs there are. The little towns are crammed in between the bluffs and the river. And the railroad runs along both sides of the river. One little town had the railroad, a row of houses, a street, another row of houses, a landing strip, another row of houses, then the bluff. All parallel to the river, and all with the absolute minimum clearance. An airplane landed between the houses as we passed by. I think we heard some mom yelling at her kid..."Don' forget, look left and right and up before you cross the street.
The current continues. I was motoring upstream at 6 mph, and decided to go back to a gas dock we had just passed. Without changing the rpm's, we were going 11 mph downstream. The high water also brings lots of logs. Sometimes entire trees are floating downstream.
There's a big July 4th riverfest in LaCross today. We've heard the Coast Guard on the VHF advising that the river will be closed. We plan to anchor tonight and then stay in LaCross tomorrow.
Hopefully the crowd will be gone.
We got off the river early today (3:00) and went a couple of miles up Lost Slough Channel behind Henderson Island to anchor in a protected area in case NOAA is right about the predicted storms.
As I dropped the anchor off the bow, it went straight down in 30' of water. At the same time, the transducer on the stern showed 4'. Interesting place.
About a half mile south of Minnesota. Ya, ubetcha.
N 43 28.872
W 091 13.492

M & M's

It appears the bats really cleaned up the M & M's last night. Not one mayfly on the boat this morning. We anchored on the Wisconsin side last night. Beautiful area. We've already seen more eagles here than any where we've traveled. Funny, as I'm writing this, an eagle flew directly over the boat.
It appears the new sparkplugs resolved the motor issue, so we're continuing on north.
Every boat owner within a hundert miles of the river is here today. Boats on the river--like most boats everywhere--only have two speeds. It's either full throttle, or stop and party. Since the river is higher than usual, the parties take place on 6" wide sandbars. The popular thing to do is take tents, coolers, dogs and spend the holiday weekend camped out on an island. The high water has them all using the same real estate.
Lock #10 at Guttenberg was a lift of only 4". Seems they could just leave both gates open.
When we left our pleasant cove this morning, I picked out a spot about 30 miles upstream for our next anchorage. When we got there, there were at least two hundert boats anchored and rafted up together. Cocktail Cove. I guess no one wants to miss their 2 weeks of summer up here, so they're all out on the water this weekend. We had to go on beyond Praire du Chien (very similar to Dawg's boat name.) Tonight, we're anchored in Mud Hen Lake. (very similar to Bret's submarine name.)
Been 125 miles so far.
N 43 09.084
W 091 09.919
We have entered the "Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge." Not sure how it's different from the rest of the river--except now it's a federal offense when I pee over the side of the boat.

Anchored again

We've been making a little over 40 miles a day. Our speed is about 6 mph, so if you paid attention in math class you know when we depart at 9 am, we stop about 4 pm.
As we were meandering up the river, several boats blasted past us going 60+ mph. They all stopped at a little beach to party. It looked inviting, but I was able to find a really nice quiet cove off the main channel. If you're playing the home version of this game we are located at
N 42 degrees, 41.538 minutes
W 090 degrees, 57.162 minutes
.
At dusk, there were hunderts of bats circling our boat. Hope they're eating misquitoes and mayflies. Now that it's totally dark, there are billions and billions of stars.
One of our motors started running rough when we increased our speed to make it in a lock before they closed the gate. After we got out of the lock, I shut it down and ran on one motor the rest of the day. I checked the fuel for water, it looked ok and it seems that problem would affect both motors the same. I carry spare spark plugs so I changed them. One of the four old ones looked suspicious. Hope that solves the problem. At least it's downstream to our truck and trailer.

closed

We had seen several aIrplanes flying low over the river just before we got to Dubuque. A few miles below lock #11, the law doggies were stopping traffic on the river. I thought they were practicing for the NASCAR flyover. Seems they have an airshow over the river on the 4th. Lucky for us, the practice only lasted 15 minutes after we arrived, and they opened the river. A lot of boats on the river near Dubuque.
Since boats were backed up, we had to lock through with 8 other boats. We were the second smallest. The locks here don't have floating bollards. The lockmaster throws down a 1/2 " line for you to hold.
In addition to the red and green floating buoys, there are daymarks scattered along the river. Each has a mile marker, and each is known by a name which shows up on the charts. Some are named after people. I remember passing the John Hartford daymark on the Cumberland River. Today, we passed another familiar name on a daymark. On the RDB, at mile 587.2, we passed the Zollicoffer daymark. Our family members know Felix as a Civil War General at Mill Springs, KY.

More mayflies

The boat was covered with mayflies again this morning. We have become a floating mayfly haven. After asking them nicely to leave, we discovered that they had laid their eggs all over the roof. I scrubbed the roof, but I suspect the inside of the air conditioner is full of them. Maybe we can bring some back to Indiana so we can enjoy their company at home.
I had thought we might stay at a free dock in the town of Bellevue, IA last night. When we got there and saw it, it was right by the end of the lock entrance. One small mistake by a towboat pilot and we would have been crushed. Wouldn't want that to happen to my boat.
I phoned up to Dubuque to reserve a slip for tonight and was told there's a 2 night minimum, and the price is twice the normal rate for this weekend. Didn't know Dubuque had a NASCAR race. Looks like another night anchored out.

miss 2

Awoke early (forgot to change my watch to central time) to find the boat covered with a bizillion mayflies. The boat was in danger of sinking from the extra weight of the bugs.
The river is certainly muddy. And being 4 feet above normal makes it difficult to see where the wing dams are, as well as the reefs that are usually islands.
I need to get into river navigation mode. I've tried to find river charts that Sea Clear will read, but no luck. So there is no little position indicator to tell me where I am. Have to keep an eye on those red and green buoys. There's a 3 or 4 knot current, so we're swimming upstream. If the bow gets started turning, we're headed for shore in a hurry.
Our first lock was a 4' lift. We thought that was small until we got to the next lock and went up a total of 6 inches.
I forgot to pack the cord that transfers photos from the camera to the phone, so until I get to wi-fi or can buy a cord, all the photos will be from the phone's camera.
We're anchored in front of a ski resort tonight. We can see one of the chair lifts running, and we ocassionally hear screaming and the sounds of something with wheels going down the hill. I think it's Radio Flyers on the toboggen course.
You blog readers might think I write this for you. However, I plan on taking a computer with me when they put me in the "home" and read my blog myself then. By then, I won't remember doing any of it. I think I'll get the blog's website address tatooed somewhere everyone in the home can see it.........on my butt.