Quad Cities to the Twin Cities August, 2013

Sabula, IA was our first stop after the Quad Cities.  What a  hoot!  We found the Bombfire Pizza (GF no problem!)---a tres' eclectic establishment, to say the least! 

Mike and Linda and their Marinette

Jim, the owner, wouldn’t  let us leave without tomatoes and onions from his garden!  From there, we went (of course) to Whitey’s for ice cream, where Sabula-ites Mike and Linda immediately recognized us as the “people on the boat”.  (Once again we were alone at a dock…)  Linda delivered fresh home grown garlic and also rhubarb bars 'ere we left Sabula!  A fine stop, it was!

We’d heard that Dubuque (that’s ‘Da buke’, not ‘doo ba coo’) had a beautiful new River complex opening this year, so we headed into the Ice Harbor there to find it.  Floods on the Mississippi are a constant battle (more about that later), and the City of Dubuque has gone proactive.  A flood wall with a lock gate has been built, so when the river rises, the gates are closed, and the town is protected.   Neat.  Unfortunately for the new marina, high water followed on the heels of the recent grand opening, causing the gates to close for nearly a month.  We were alone in the 'as yet undiscovered'  70+ slip marina.  It has been built, and they will come.  We did.

The marina complex includes not only beautiful slips, but a Mississippi River Museum which boasted a wonderful history of the river, complete with 3 and 4D movies (I got splashed when the bear grabbed a salmon!), a library, a working boatbuilding ‘village’, the ways to launch the newly built boat, an aquarium with outdoor otters playing,  and the William Blake paddlewheel dredge (available for touring). 

Inside Wm Black's engine room---the ice cream machine!

Next door is a Grand Hotel with a huge Water Park.  We wandered in just to see it, and 45 min. later were still shaking out heads at the things they thought of.   Family fun---we understand that it is mobbed all winter!  

A word about the Mississippi.  For the first time in our 5 years of cruising, I’ve felt that the stories about flooding should be taken personally.  We were deluged by rain and rising water in the ‘goofy 200’, looked at the repairs as yet incomplete after floods at Pt. St Charles and Two Rivers, and found that the rising River had kept boats out of Dubuque.  Need I say more?  In the past years, as we cruised on the Ohio, Cumberland and Tennessee, somehow the flood stories were ancient history, as in  “Yep, the water was THIS high back in ‘39”.  Suddenly, the water was twice the height of our boat LAST WEEK.  “Don’t need to worry about the docks, they just ride up on the poles.  It’s the water in the [second story] office that is a problem.”

Happily, the River now is beautiful, calm and extremely manageable.  The locks here, (there area 27 of them, conveniently named #27, #26, etc.etc.) as on the Ohio, create lakes that provide pleasant cruising with minimal push from the current.  They say Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes.  The Mississippi could be called the River of 10,000 islands.  

And sandy beaches abound.  Some of them are the creation of dredging---sand removed from the channel and placed ashore.  Others flow from inland, where we’re told sand is mined and sold to other states to be used in the fracking process. We saw dozens of Minnesotans, Wisconsin-ites and Iowans pull their boats ashore and picnic---enjoying the sunshin-ey last days of summer.

We have seen very little barge traffic here on the ‘Upper’ .  Trains? Many.  There are tracks along both sides of the river, and lots and lots of long---100+cars---freight trains hauling petroleum cars, double decked cargo containers and who knows what else.  

The train spans the frame of the photo...Beautiful country.

 Amtrak shares the tracks---we met folks in the Red Wing, MN station waiting for the nightly train to Chicago---it was already 30 minutes late.

Wabasha, MN was a great stop.  The Eagle Center introduces you up close to 5 Eagles that are unable to live in the wild. 

Just up the waterway is Slippery’s, the pub that provided the inspiration for the Grumpy Old Men movies.  North of Wabasha the River flows through Lake Pepin, where the ice fishing in the movie took place.  My brother chuckles at the memory of ice fishermen’s pick up trucks parked all over the lake when he’d visit relatives in the area.

At long last, (ok, it was a week…) we made our way to a slip at Twin City Marina in South St. Paul.  Looper friends Liz and Steve

(SHINGABISS) were there to meet us, along with a couple who winter in Aberdeen, MS, and are friends with my Aberdeen, SD high school classmate, Jan.  That small world thing, again!

My sister Betty and her husband, Gene drove to the Cities from SD so Betty could ‘bob’ on the boat for a day.  Had a great time introducing her to River life, and to the Mississippi Pub.  She brought some quilting that she works on in the car.

We spent the evening at Gene and Betty’s son Jeff’s home in Mpls. enjoying steaks that showed off wife Megan’s grilling talents!

The USPS Governing Board meeting was in San Antonio, TX, and we flew down to spend Tues.-Friday there.  Then headed to NY to be present at and enjoy immensely the wedding of daughter Kris and John McAndrews.