Day 12

Left Burlington at about 9:30 again today. It looks like the weather will be a bit nicer. Still cloudy and windy, but at least the sun is trying to peak it’s way out. It was a challenge crossing a large body of water on the way towards Keokuk, but Grant managed the boat fine, as always. Tabbie was taking one of her daily naps. Today I think that she took two! We had about a forty-five minute delay at a train swing bridge today. This put us behind schedule. Then we entered Lock 19, the most interesting of locks yet! This lock dropped between 33-35 feet and emptied out about 34 million gallons of water. We had to tie a rope to a “buoy” on the wall that descended down the wall as the water emptied. Grant held the rope, while Tabbie sat on the bow and pushed away from the wall with her legs to keep the front of the boat from slamming into the lock wall. The gates on this lock were massive and made you feel like you were in a castle. The lock was the length of 4 football fields. All of the past locks that we have encountered had dropped us no more than 11 feet and were about 1/5 the size. As a side note this lock and dam is one of only two dams that actually generate power, the other being the Minneapolis lock and dam #1.
Because of the delay at the bridge and the extra time at the lock, we didn’t make it as far as we would have liked. So we tried to beach the boat on an island, but found that it was too shallow (almost another sandbar incident, but Grant learned his lesson and took it slow). We then anchored it at the end of another island, when we noticed that we would be battling two currents. (Brilliant idea, Grant) But we decided to stick it out, only to find that our generator was not working, a battery had died, we were out of water, and we were STARVING! Grant tried to jump the battery to the generator, which resulted in it being able to start but not keep running. We were going to be without any power, heat and lights tonight. Which meant no warm food….. Until we figured that we could just set a can of beans on the grill and cook a boxed dinner in a cake pan. Calm all your fears folks, we are geniuses! (less the grammatical mistakes) So now we spend the rest of our night in candlelight. It will be an early morning tomorrow. We have to make up for lost time.



Lock Opening (34' drop)


"Pushing" away from the lock wall