We Made It!

At 4:15 p.m. on Thursday, September 4, after 4172 miles, 156 calendar days, 98 cruising days, 112 locks, 1424 gallons of diesel, and with a huge sigh of relief, we reached our 2014 cruising destination and docked at the St. Paul Yacht Club in St. Paul, Minnesota.

First view of downtown St. Paul

Rounding the final curve

It had been a rather long and challenging day--departure before 7 a.m., refueling, a 2-hour wait for lockage at Lock 2 in Hastings, MN, concerns about the weather, and multiple meetings of tows with barges in narrow channels. One very nice aspect of the wait in Hastings was that we were able to spend a little time with my mom and dad.  They had driven down to Hastings to watch us lock through, and came to the Hastings courtesy dock where we had tied up waiting for our turn in the lock.

Lon with Jerry and Bev Clausen, Pat's dad and mom

Pat with dad and mom

They were able to get some photos of us at the lock. This was fun for us, as we don't have much with the two of us "in action" on CARIB II.

Lon and Pat on CARIB II approaching Lock 2

CARIB II in Lock 2,
moving toward the wall

CARIB II leaves Lock 2

The previous days we'd had nice stops in the historic river towns of Winona (Monday, Sept. 1), Wabasha (Tuesday, Sept. 2), and Red Wing (Wednesday, Sept. 3).

Lon by the "Polish Museum" in Winona. The city
apparently has a large Polish population. We were sorry
that the museum wasn't open the day we were there.

Sunrise in Winona as we prepare to leave
for Wabasha

Pat on the observation platform at the
National Eagle Center in Wabasha

Wabasha was decked out for fall

Friendly locals: Lon and his Wabasha
"beer buddies"

We will be in St. Paul until the end of October. CARIB II will be pulled from the water, winterized, and put under shrink wrap for the winter. Since we don't want to spend the winter under shrink wrap, we'll drive back to St. Petersburg to spend the months of November through April in an apartment near downtown. Next spring we'll return to St. Paul and spend the summer on CARIB II at the St. Paul Yacht Club. After being on the move for 5 months we're looking forward to these opportunities to reconnect with friends and family in Minnesota and Florida. Next September we'll head for St. Petersburg on CARIB II and hope to complete the Great Loop by Thanksgiving 2015.

We are now officially on hiatus from the Great Loop, which means that this blog is going on hiatus as well until next September. It's been quite a year! 

Two Big Milestones

On Sunday, August 31, we reached two big milestones in our journey this year: (1) we completed 4000 miles of cruising and (2) at 4006 miles into our trip we crossed the border into Minnesota.

It's seems unreal that we have cruised 4000+
miles this year

This made our Minnesota hearts beat a bit faster--goodbye
Iowa, hello Minnesota!

Our main thought as we have been cruising the past few days is how beautiful the upper Mississippi River valley is. From Dubuque north the bluffs have been absolutely stunning. Maybe we're prejudiced, being natives of the upper Midwest, but we think that the cruising and the scenery has been some of the best of our trip.

At this point in our journey the words are not flowing very easily for the blog, so I will let photos do most of the "talking".

August 29: Dubuque - Guttenberg, IA

Approaching Lock 12 at dawn

Downtown Guttenberg-settled by
 Germans, named after
 Johanes Gutenberg,
 printer of the famous Bible

Lon checks out the views from
Guttenberg's pretty waterfront park

August 30: Guttenberg - Lansing, IA

Boating in early a.m. fog and drizzle

Victorian canoe with Union Jack.
 Two of these canoes
entered Lock 10 after we left

Canoe approaching the lock

Lansing has two "branches" of
Horsfall's, each full of an eclectic mix of
merchandise

Lon amid the Horsfall's clutter

All that shopping made us hungry

August 31: Lansing - La Crosse, WI

Another foggy morning

Red barn under the bluff

It's Sunday, and the pleasure boats are
out in force. This was one of several islands
serving as "party central"

We were glad to escape the wake by
early afternoon and get into our slip
at La Crosse Municipal Harbor Marina.
(we are in the middle of the top row)  

September 1: La Crosse - Winona, MN

Loving the bluffs

The Wisconsin side of the river

The Minnesota side of the river

We left La Crosse this morning in a light rain in order to get ahead of a tow and barges that was headed for Lock 7.  The sun was out for most of our cruise, but we made it into our slip in Winona Marina just ahead of a brief downpour. Good timing all around.

The end of our cruising for this year is clearly in sight. The next days look good for boating and our anticipated itinerary is as follows:

Sept. 2: Winona - Wabasha, MN

Sept. 3: Wabasha - Red Wing, MN

Sept. 4: Red Wing - St. Paul

We can't wait!

Small Town, Big Town

Tuesday (Aug. 26) was a very short cruising day for us--only 16 miles--and that turned out to be a good thing because we encountered a couple of delays. The first was due to weather. Thunderstorms were in the Clinton area until about mid-morning, and we weren't able to get underway until after 10 a.m. Our second delay came about 15 minutes into our cruise. When we were just a short distance from the first (and only) lock of the day, we got a very loud "engine overheat" warning. We pulled off the channel and were able to tie up to some tire-clad posts near the shore so that Lon could investigate. Fortunately, it turned out to be an easy fix--removing vegetation from the raw water intake of the engine cooling system. A quick lock through and two hours on the water brought us to the very small town of Sabula, Iowa for the evening.

Downtown Sabula has seen better days--
there wasn't much going on

This and the gas station
seemed to be the busiest
 places in town

Island City Marina was an OK place to
spend the evening

Abandoned storehouse(?) along the
waterfront near the harbor

We left Sabula rather early on Wednesday morning (Aug. 27) and had a beautiful cruising day to Dubuque, Iowa. We breezed through our one lock of the day, and did not see a single tow with barges all day. Other than a couple of fishing boats our only maritime company was paddlewheel tour boats.

Meeting "Twilight" as
 it heads downriver

The Spirit of Dubuque out
 for a day cruise

We have been enjoying the scenery during our river cruising, and it seems to be getting better the further north we go. There are lots of islands, and river bluffs make the occasional appearance. We have also seen quite a few white pelicans; they're beautiful in flight. According to one of the lock masters, the local fishermen aren't too thrilled to have the pelicans and cormorants as competition for the game fish--I'm not sure what kind of solution there can be to that particular problem.

River bluff country

Pelicans and cormorants have their own island

Sandy beach with a volleyball net--it must be one
of the local hangouts on weekends

Because we had been cruising for nine days straight--and the weather forecast for Thursday did not look good--we decided to take a "day off" and spend a couple of nights in Dubuque. The Port of Dubuque Marina is quite new and very nice, but it's nearly empty because they are a transient boater-only marina and apparently there aren't that many transient boaters out and about during the work week.  

CARIB II (left) and one other cruiser in the
Port of Dubuque Marina

The predicted all-day thunderstorms didn't materialize today, so we were able to spend time exploring Dubuque's attractions. We skipped the casino, but did visit the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium, which was located adjacent to the marina at the port.

Part of the National Mississippi River
Museum & Aquarium Campus

Lon "catfishing" at the museum

There's an alligator in Iowa!

The William M. Black steam-powered dredge boat.
Retired from service in 1973 because it was a fuel hog,
requiring large amounts of oil to generate steam

We also got on our bikes for a ride around downtown and a few of the surrounding neighborhoods. We partook of the cheap thrill of going up the side of a steep hill in an old funicular rail car. The Fenelon Place Elevator, 296 feet long and with a rise of 189 feet, claims to be the shortest and steepest railroad in the world. The current railway dates to 1893.

The view looking up from the rail car--
much easier than trying to cycle the hill

One car descends while another
comes up the hill

Dubuque is a fairly large river town, with a population somewhere between fifty and sixty thousand. Its neighborhoods have a large number of historic homes, many of them very large, which speaks to the wealth that must have existed here. Even today, Dubuque is apparently doing better economically than many other small cities.

A beautifully restored home . . . 

 . . . and one still looking for
a little TLC

Main Street Dubuque

The weather is still looking a bit unsettled for the next few days, but we think there may be some breaks tomorrow that will enable us to continue to our next proposed destination, Guttenberg, Iowa. As we do, Illinois will be left behind and Wisconsin will start to share the river with Iowa.

Mud and Thunder

We are making steady progress up the Mississippi, although some days have been easier than others. Tonight we are at a wonderful marina in Clinton, Iowa, which is pretty close to the midpoint of the eastern boundary of Iowa.

Friday, August 22, was a nice, relaxed cruising day. We had 37 lock-free miles from Keokuk to Burlington, Iowa. Along the way we passed Nauvoo, Illinois, which has great historical significance for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) as the town to which Joseph Smith led the Mormons to escape religious persecution in Missouri.

Our view of the Nauvoo Temple

The only downside was that we were not able to use the marina in Burlington because their harbor was just too shallow for our boat. We had to settle for a tie-up on the courtesy dock for "Big Muddy's Bar & Grill". With the high heat and humidity we weren't too crazy about not being able to plug into electricity, but the generator allowed us to use the AC in the evening, and even after we turned it off at bedtime the boat stayed pretty comfortable during the night.

Dinner at the restaurant got us a dock for the night

Nice buildings, but not much was
 happening in downtown
Burlington on a Friday night

Saturday's (Aug. 23) cruising was a different story. We left Burlington just after 6 a.m., knowing that we had at least 50 miles and two locks to contend with before reaching a municipal marina in Muscatine, Iowa that we might be able to fit into. We were happy to get through the first lock of the day without any difficulty. A few miles past the lock we noticed that we no longer had clear skies and that dark clouds were rapidly building to the south and west. The weather radar looked ugly, and when we heard a towboat captain say over the marine radio that it was raining too hard to see between the two bridges (in Burlington) we knew we had to quickly find a place to tie up. We were very thankful to be near an industrial building with several mooring dolphins, so we quickly tied up to one that was nicely padded with tires.

Our port during the storm

Two hours later we were finally able to start moving. Between the storm delay, current that wanted to push our speed under 7 mph, and a 2 1/2 hour wait at the second lock of the day, it took us nearly 11 hours to get to Muscatine. We stirred up mud and the dock was a little short, but we made it work and we were very happy to have electricity again.

CARIB II in Muscatine Municipal Harbor

Historical marker in Muscatine's Riverside Park

Sunday (Aug. 24) was finally a day when there was no threat of rain, and it brought the boaters out onto the river in force. It was the most boats we'd seen in quite some time.

Boaters in the Quad Cities area

We got a leisurely start to the day and managed the 31 miles and two locks without undue stress (other than dodging boat wake here and there). The most difficult part of the day was the hot and humid effort it took to get the electricity in our somewhat "tired" marina to work. The best part of the marina was that it was immediately adjacent to a very good restaurant that had live music playing outside. And the sunset over the river was spectacular.

The Captain's Table Restaurant
 at Marquis Harbor

A peaceful end to our cruising day

The heat and humidity are still at dangerous levels here, so we started cruising just before 6:30 a.m. to take advantage of the cooler morning weather. Thunderstorm threats are back in the picture, although the various weather services can't seem to agree as to the timing--morning or afternoon? We got right into our one lock of the day, then it was nothing but smooth "sailing" to Clinton.

The stressful life of CARIB II's captain when the
First Mate is driving

Finally, a "real" marina--good depth (i.e., no mud), good docks, no funky electrical issues, and clean toilets/showers. And another really good restaurant on the property. Around 2 p.m. a severe thunderstorm rolled through the area with high wind and LOTS of rain. So glad to already be tied up and not have to scramble for refuge. Afterwards Lon spent a few hours trying to remove the vestiges of the spiders and other bugs that have made themselves at home on CARIB II during our time on the river.

We did a short walk into Clinton tonight--the Dairy Queen was calling to us after several days of towns and marinas with no ice cream. But we have to admit that the courthouse in Clinton was pretty impressive, too.

Clinton County Courthouse

Getting a "Blizzard fix" in Clinton

Thunderstorms are in the forecast for the next several days, but we hope to be able to keep moving if we can just figure out the right weather windows each day.