Alton to Kimmswick

Here we are at Hoppies "Marina"...if that's what you want to call it--It's 4 or 5 retired barges, rusting out, attached and chained to rocks, floating near a quaint little town called Kimmswick which just so happened to be celebrating its Sesquicentennial today, yes today! (that's 150 years for us mere mortals that don't speak Latin...thank you Chip for telling me how to spell it)...Our perfect timing of showing up at places at exactly the right moment continues! The downtown is a bit surreal...kinda' like Goodland on Steroids. The Stores are all brightly painted and mostly all sell the same sh#@ and knick-knacks, yet we had to go in and out of each and everyone of them in the hopes we'd come across a treasure (which indeed we did...and packages are on their way to our 3 granddaughters as I write)...I highly recommend all loopers coming through to check out 'The Design Haus' on Front Street...possibly one of the cutest shoppes I have ever been in!

--After a two hour wait (check out the videos on YOUTUBE ) we locked through and actually made up the time lost by taking advantage of the 3-4 knot current..Ithaka actually saw double digits for probably the first time ever! I had to put my wind-breaker on!

One of the highlights of the day...heck, one of the highlights of the entire loop, was passing by the arch (click on picture to make it bigger) in St. Louis...The Gateway to the West! (video also on Youtube)

Ending up at Hoppies was not by chance...we've been planning to stop here for years...To meet Fern of course! On the Mississippi she is famous--(happens to be my own mother's name, too!) We attended her 'River Talk' tonight and with her assistance, we are plotted right through to Mobile! Thank you Fern.

It's over 200 miles to the next marina...we are aggressively planning to do 110 miles tomorrow and make it all the way to Little Diversion Channel. This is more remote than the Canadian wilderness!