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Day 278

9/9/2010

4 Comments

 
                            Check out full day 277 post below
Daily Stats

Start:        6:45 AM - MM 301 - 8 miles south of Hannibal, MO
Finish        12:45 PM - MM 267
Time:        6:00 hours
Daily dist:    34 miles
Lock 24:    11:15-11:30 Portaged lock and dam
Total dist:    5400+   
Companions:    None
Weather:    Mostly cloudy to overcast, 70’s, SE wind 5-10 mph
Notes:        Showers threatened all day but it only rained an hour or so.
After a week and a half with apparently nothing to haul, the barge industry is back in action.  Over the last two days I’ve seen more barge traffic than I had seen in the ten days prior.  This traffic is resulting in bottlenecks at every lock.  When I reached Lock 24 today (Lord knows what happened to Lock 23) two barges were waiting to lock through downstream while an upstream barge was already re-assembling himself after locking through.  It didn’t matter to me because once again I was able to slide the Ikkuma, fully loaded, over the dry spillway on the far end of the dam.  It took a little doing to round up the logs and sticks required to act as bumpers over the rocky embankment, but I was up, over, and back in the water in just fifteen minutes, faster than it takes to lock through even without a waiting line. 
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The weather man had been talking about a lot of rain on its way from the disintegrating hurricane that rolled into the Gulf last week.  The sky was cloudy but thankfully, so far, all I’ve seen is a couple short showers.  In fact the entire afternoon was dry and beautiful with a hint of sunshine even popping out just before sunset. 

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Not really sure why Jake wanted this pictrue in here... Any suggestions?
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With a little more time at the end of the day’s paddling than I’m used to I was able to go for a walk along shore where I’m camped.  I could only go about 100 yds in either direction until the sand ran out and became sticky mud, but along the way I did find an interesting animal tooth (looks like a molar from something big).  I also took the time to clean up my kayak a bit.  Weeks in tannic rivers had yellowed the normally bright white hull.  The other day I had pulled the Ikkuma up on a mud beach for a break and before I launched I rubbed the sticky mud off the hull.  In so doing I discovered that I’d rubbed some of the yellowing off the hull.  Figuring it couldn’t hurt, today I rolled the Ikkuma up on its side and polished out the entire hull with Mississippi River mud.  Incredibly the mud and a little elbow grease did a great job in making the kayak look presentable again.  It seems like a silly thing to polish a boat in the midst of a 5000 mile trip, but wouldn’t it be a shame to come across the final finish line with a dirty boat.

4 Comments
Lyn Stachovak
9/9/2010 10:49:07 pm

One more day and you're at the official finish line of this journey. Dad and I love you and keep paddling.

Mom

Reply
Al Benton
9/9/2010 11:46:32 pm

About 50% of all cargo on the river is agriculture products and harvest started early this year, thus, barges by the hundreds.

L&D 23 is a mystery, searched again but no answer yet. Just one more lock (or portage) and you're on Pool 26.

Reply
Dave Diederich
9/9/2010 11:52:34 pm

Wow. One more day. The end of a long adventure. I have really enjoyed following you along. What's next, the Grand Canyon?

Reply
Andy
9/10/2010 03:10:13 am

Great job Jake, you're almost done!

Reply



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