Day 54 on the Mississippi River

October 14, 2021

Thursday

Tent camping in Iowa

RM 645

697 miles completed

We had a 25 mile day.

I took three extra strength Tylenol. We got started paddling at 8:20 am. Everything was great in the morning. The sun came out. There was hardly any wind. We made five miles in the first hour and a half. We stopped in Lancing and refilled our water jugs.

By lunch we had almost 12 miles.

I took two more extra strength Tylenol.

The wind got up and was in our face. We fought our way to number nine dam. We stayed on the west shore and bypassed the lock by portaging over the spillway. It was relatively easy. We just took a few things out of the boats a carried the boats over the top of the spillway. It was just 40 feet or so. We reloaded and we’re gone in a few minutes. It was much quicker than going through the locks, and we didn’t have to paddle across the open water to the East side of the lake where the locks are.

The wind continued in our face and we continued to dig hard.

We finally found a nice place to camp around five o’clock. It was a public boat ramp with toilets on the Iowa side of the river at Waukon Junction, just south of Harper’s Ferry.

We had red beans and rice with our choice of protein… salmon or chicken.