Sunny Days: Alton/St. Louis/Hoppies

We pulled into Alton Marina on Wed. the 16^th and all of us (Kat, Gimmetime, Fugitive) were ready for civilization. We leave Kat and Gimmetime here as they are renting a car and going to St. Charles and St. Louis to see the sites.

Dinner in Alton as we go separate ways for a little while

After a couple of days Fugitive will head south with us. We hope to host all these new friends in Nashville in a few weeks. Alton was fun—marina and city plus we had 2 great dinners with our friends. The trip from Alton to Hoppies Marina was 42 miles through 2 locks and downtown St. Louis. We got up early to try to make it through the locks and got in the Mel Price (1^st) by 9:20am—then down at the other end of the canal came the Chain of Rocks (2^nd)—this took 4 hours! It was grueling. We thought it was good that we were following a cruise boat called the American Eagle through the not only did it not seem to get priority over the barges but when we entered the lock, the lockmaster sent us to tie off next to them and as we got along side, they hit their bow thruster and sent us sideways into the wall. We had an abundance of fenders out and thankfully hit the wall smack on the fenders—not damage, big scare. Downtown St. Louis was filled with high rise buildings and the Arch—waterfront was sadly lacking. We got into Hoppies around 3:30 and met the infamous Fern. We are here with Fugitive, TiKi (Michigan City buds), Plane 2 Sea (Charlie and Kay) and Valentine (Jon and Nancy) these will be our running buddies down the 220 miles of the Mississippi. Fern held court for an hour explaining the best way to tackle the mighty Mississippi.