To Trempealeau

We left Lake Pepin at 8:45 Wed. a.m. The sky was cloudy and it was only about 50 degrees, but time to get the show on the road/water.  So off we motored.  The main navigation channel was on the Minnesota side of the lake so we went pretty much straight over to that side.  There came a barge around the bend.  He stayed on his side & we passed without any problem.

Above you can see the barge in the distance and below he is getting nearer.  You can click on a pic to enlarge it.

Below the barge is passing beside us.

Then just before reaching Alma we motored past this nice houseboat (below) which must have spent the night here along the Minnesota shore. Nice quiet spot.

We were motoring about 5 - 7 miles an hour.  Bob turned the boat upstream to see how much the current was helping.  It added about 3 miles an hour to our speed.  Nice!  We decided we would never take this trip going up river.  Too slow going against the current.

Lots of dredging activity going on between Winona and Lake Pepin.

The first lock went very smoothly but the anticipation and not knowing what to do was stressful.  You can see by the second lock (Lock 5), we were old hands & fooled around with the camera. My job was to climb to the bow and anchor to the side of the lock with a line and Bob ran the motor & anchored the aft end of our boat. 

It helped that no other boat traffic was around the locks.

Easy peasy.

The first lock dropped us about 3 feet, the second one (lock 5) about 5 feet and the 3rd one, we only dropped about 2". No kidding!  We thought it was a joke.  Pretty interesting, though. There are 27 Lock & Dams along the Mississippi.  Those 27 are all located along Missouri and north to St. Paul, MN.