Day 38 going past St Louis to Alton, IL

      We left Hoppies at 6:30 am.  The day was overcast with rain off and on as can be seen in the sky above Hoppies as we departed. The big white yacht is Lady Chateau. We last saw them about 7 days ago, and we had thought that they already were way ahead of us. However, they had a transmission problem (it is a boat after all) that had delayed them. The problem was fixed, but they still had a leak in the transmission that they were going to live with until they got home to Minneapolis.  

     In spite of the grey skies and some rain, we did see a nice sun rise over the Mississippi River just after we started. Our trip today is only 42.8 miles to Alton, Illinois. Alton is about 15 miles before Grafton, IL at the mouth of the Illinois River, which was our original destination. We checked the weather forecast and river levels before we made this decision. I wanted to "get off" the Mississippi River before we stopped again. However, The Admiral had called around to check fuel prices, and their price ($1.999/ gallon for diesel) was substantially less than our other option, which was Grafton. We liked Alton during a multi-day stop there on our last Loop so with positive weather/water level predictions we decided to not just stop for fuel but to stay a night also.

       Our next photo is yet another one of those ubiquitous power plants that we have passed on our journeys. However, this power plant comes with a unique twist...

     This one is unique in that at the outlet into the Mississippi River for cooling water there are these spectacular water jets. They look like the kind of intermittent water jets that you see in a kids splash park. However, these jets must be 6 inches in diameter and throw a huge plume of water over 50 feet into the air. They might serve some real purpose, like to cool the water, but they are really fun to watch. Like I have said many times. Everyday is the same and yet, every day is different.

     Just past the power plant, we passed this beautiful home (?) hidden back in the trees. I really like the architecture, and I can say that I have only fallen in love with maybe a half dozen houses that we have seen on either Loop, but for some reason I was really taken with this one even though it did not have large windows or glass walls to really take in their wonderful view...

     Then in short order we were in the St Louis metropolitan area. The city offers many sights from the water, but it is totally boater unfriendly. They do have some docks for tour boats, but there are not even any short term docks available. Not much of a tourist magnet???

     One of our first and certainly the most unusual was this "yard art" at a private residence (photo at right). We have seen some unusual sights, but this one certainly wins some sort of prize...  The owner must take some pride in this as it is nicely landscaped and prominently placed in their yard. Plus, I would think that the neighbors must really love this in their million dollar views of the river.

     Moving right along... There are two things that come to my mind first when I think of St Louis. They are Budweiser Beer and the gateway Arch. Their Chamber of Commerce would probably disagree, but...  Well, breweries are not generally beautiful to look at, but most of the buildings in the photo at the left appear to be part of the massive complex. They do have a very large neon (?) lighted Budweiser sign, but  it does not face the water. 

      The photo at the right is of the Gateway Arch, which really is spectacular when viewed from the water. I have been there on land, and it is impressive from there as well. However, on land I was more impressed with the size rather than the beauty of its graceful lines. Even on this gray, overcast day, the arch is quite spectacular. Also, you get some perspective of the beautiful setting with the long park extending up from it. We did get a much better view of the arch this time since we were going about 4 mph up river. On the previous Loop we flew past the arch going over 11 mph in the down stream direction.

     The last view of the city that I am going to include is once again a little off beat. Like any big city, St Louis has its share of abandoned factory buildings. In this case some individual or group has taken a large brick building and painted a rather nice mural on it. Of course, it now has some graffiti on it as well. If you don't have the money or ability to tear it down, then why not make it into something pretty to look at. I guess with my logic some cities, like Detroit, would be just one massive mural... Anyway, I liked this one since it was different.

       Once past St Louis the scenery quickly became pretty rural. I believe that present day St Louis was not the original site, but it was moved here to get higher ground to avoid the annual (or more often) floods. When Lewis and Clark started up the Missouri River in 1803, I think that the city was much nearer the junction of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.

      As we continue up the Mississippi River, we have 2 locks to transit before our destination at Alton, Illinois. The first lock raised us about six feet and its purpose was mainly to provide passage around the Chain of Rocks, which are rapids in the river that are still there. The photo at the right shows a unique feature of today's locks that is a "lift" gate. All of the other locks that we have been through have swinging gates at both ends. On the upstream end of these locks the gate goes down vertically. The upstream end of a lock has a higher "bottom" or concrete sill. The lower gates have to have a top as high as the upstream end and a bottom as low as the bottom of the entry channel. These downward retracing gates seemed to work quickly and certainly did not collect debris coming down the river. The debris in the water collects at the gates. If a gate swings, it must retract into a recess in the lock wall, and this is not possible if there is debris caught on the gate.

      The second or Melvin Price Lock and Dam only had a lift of two feet today. In fact we didn't even have to tie on during the second locking.  The lock is 1200 feet long so we entered and went very slowly, and before we reached the other end, the gate lowered and the horn sounded so we just kept on going. In the hazy distance beyond the gate you can see twin towers for a bridge and part of the city of Alton beyond. It was kind of nice to see our destination before we had even left the lock.

     Neither of these dams has a reservoir with any storage capacity, but they do raise the water level to permit boat traffic, especially the deeper tows. It has not happened in a long time, but a number of lake freighters were actually built elsewhere and brought up the Mississippi and Illinois River to the Great Lakes. This was mainly before the St Lawrence Seaway was completed. Many of the modern large lake freighters, especially the "footers" that are about 1,000 feet long were built on the Great Lakes since they are about 300 feet too long to come up the seaway.. This is not entirely true since one of the footers came up this river system. Or, I should say that the bow and stern section were built elsewhere and welded together to come up the rivers as what must have been a very odd looking boat. Once on the Great Lakes, it was cut apart and some 800 feet of cargo hull was put in the middle.

     After the last lock we travelled an additional two miles to the Marina.  We made it to Alton Marina at 2:30 pm this afternoon. We were very interested to see exactly how much fuel we had burned in the approximately 300 miles since we left Green Turtle Bay Marina on the Cumberland Marina. We knew approximately how much fuel we had burned, but the answer was 208.8 gallons of diesel. That is just over 1/3 of our fuel capacity, which confirmed our planning that fuel was not going to be an issue. The actual fuel mileage is more difficult to calculate since about 100 mies were down river with a gain of about 2 mph, and about 200 miles were up river where we went about 9+ miles through the water for every 5 miles over the ground. Also we intentionally went a little faster than normal up river, which also reduces our fuel mileage. The bottom line is that we made it safely with no mechanical problems or damage from debris and on pretty much on schedule. We are pleased to say the least!
     The other news that we got was that the rain had finally stopped so that we can walk to a nearby restaurant. Nearby is something of an under statement since the marina is on a fairly wide part of the flood plain so we had to walk a circuitous path along curving roadway just to get to the base of the hill that the city is built up on. We returned to Lucky Us and after a second long walk for Lucky, we tumbled into bed for a much needed full nights sleep.