We left the marina at Alton, IL Tuesday, Oct 2nd and locked through the Mel Price Lock with no wait (this is very unusual; our longest wait is about 2 1/2 hours). About 5 miles down river the Missouri River joins the Mississippi; lots of turbulence there. It's hard to imagine the Lewis-Clark Expedition paddling against the current in these waters. It was a different river then, however, with no man-made dams. Four miles from there we went through the Chain of Rocks Lock 
after a long wait. The picture of the pelicans was taken there. The locktender at the Mel Price asked us where our Packer sign was (he was from Superior, WI). Since we had neglected to bring one along I had to do a hand-made one (see picture). I must have jinxed them as they were 4 -0 but lost their next game!
Seeing the famous arch as we passed St. Louis was very cool. The city has no facilities for pleasure craft to tie up so we just passed by. There's lots of barge traffic around St. Louis but Cap'n Paul got us through just fine.We docked at Hoppe's Marine Service at Kimmswick, MO mid-afternoon. It's quite a well known place for "Loopers" to get current river information from Fern Hoppe. We were tied up to an old barge/dock with electricity but no other facilities for $1/ft. We spoke to a couple from Scotland who sailed their boat across the ocean and are now doing the Loop. They've lived aboard their double-masted sailboat for about 12 years!
Our second night there our guests for the week were "delivered" by their son, his wife and little Kate. We had a nice dinner out and tried to sleep despite wake from barges and a train whistle that seemed to be right outside our windows (I should say "ports"). I teased them that we wouldn't look this clean or smell this good for quite awhile. (And they thought I was kidding!)More updates later today.... we're moving on again!
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