Hoppies



"The Great Arch" at St. Louis, Kentucky



We're seeing interesting rock formations along the river

We travelled 58 miles today, and are docked at Hoppies at Kimmswick, Missouri. We had planned to leave Grafton early this morning, but it was foggy again, and so we waited until it lifted at about 9:30. Travelling on the Mississippi was a little different than on the Illinois. The Mississippi is wide, brown, fast flowing, turbulent, and full of debris - trees, logs, stumps, etc. A long most of the Illinois, the sides were low and sandy. We have started seeing high stone bluffs above the river. One side of the river is still Illinois, on the other side we are travelling through Missouri, and the lock staff refer to it as such, eg keep to the Missouri side. There were two locks today, we passed through the first one quite quickly, had to wait a while for the second one. We travelled almost constantly with tows, and they are getting bigger. We met one today that had 35 barges in front of the tow, 7 barges wide and 5 deep. We passed St. Louis, Missouri, saw the big arch that is called "the gateway to the west".  The water in front of St. Louis was very busy, there were barges along both sides, with tows pushing them back and forth, and then many huge tows coming and going up and down the river. And of course, at all times we were watching for the debris in the water. Made for an interesting day. Arrived at Hoppies at about 4; Fern greeted us and told us that she would go over our charts with us as soon as we were settled.  Fern and her husband have a long floating dock along the Mississippi, made up of 3 10 ft. barges tied into the stone cliffs with cables. The Hopkins men worked on the river as lamplighters before powered lights were installed; Charles Hopkins, known as Hoppie and Fern's husband, may well be the last living lamplighter. Fern offers informational sessions on dealing with the tows, anchorages, and generally on how to proceed from here to Mobile, a wonderful opportunity to travellers such as ourselves.
We are three transient boats, Dream Fever, Ginnie and Malcolm from Australia, and ourselves. After attending Fern's session, we got together for a combined dinner. Had planned to go out, but the restaurant in town has apparently closed, and in fact, I think our combined dinner was better. We hope to leave early in the morning, but will wait to see if there is fog again. Once the fog cleared this morning it was sunny and warm, temperatures in the 80s. Forecast is for the same tomorrow.