Monday September 29th

Finally made it to a marina--with WiFi--everyone must have thought we had sunk to the bottom of the old Mississippi!!  We have had a great trip--with incredible weather--sunny, blue skies, and no wind.  It just does not get any better..........  but it was hot!!   Inspite of the dirty water--we hung onto the swim ladder in all three rivers and got cooled off--I didn't say we got clean--just cool!   The Mississippi is big, swirling,  muddy, but still interesting.  Lots of barge traffic and varied landscape--from big cliffs to sand dunes. 

 You never knew what was around the next corner.  We found great anchorages off the channel--one we tied right up to old barges--had a great quiet nite

Passed by St Louis but no dock to tie up to, so just had to keep going.

We actually enjoyed the Mississippi better than the Illinois--there seemed to be less logs and debris in the water, but you sure had to stay in the channel and watch out for the 'wing dams', which might or might not be underwater.  Because there are no marina's along the way, gas was a concern.  At one town we were able to tie up to another boat and go uptown with our gas cans for a refill.  Thankfully a city employee came along and said he would take us to the gas station after he was finished work.   What a relief--as the station was a mile away and we needed to fill up 8 cans!!! We arrived at the junction of the Ohio at noon on Saturday---now we were heading up stream.  Coming down stream on the Mississippi we were cruising at 11-12 mph---now we were going up stream--and at the same rpm's we were going 6mph!!  Once again we found great anchorages--just along the sandy shore--and out of the tug boats way

at nite we had a fantastic sunset

 This morning we left the Ohio and travelled up the Cumberland river for 33 miles, before arriving at the Lock that would take us into Barkley lake in Kentucky.   This is a huge lock and I think we were raised about 45ft before heading out into the lake.   The pictures got out of sequence but you can see the height of the wall in the dam, in the picture above.  So now we are in Green Turtle Marina--and yes they have lots of green turtles, which they feed every evening.  We will stay here for a few days and rest after having conquered those last three big rivers!!!