THURSDAY JUNE 7TH, 2012

We left  pretty much at first light. The weather is holding and this morning the river was like glass. But our peaceful, tranquil morning was suddenly disturbed by a flock of starlings. What is it with these guys? They swarmed around the boat, landed on it, hopped around and then flew off toward shore. A few minutes later another group arrived. This went on for about half an hour.

We finally realized they were picking up dead bugs on the boat. Maybe starlings aren’t as worthless as I always thought!

At this point in the blog, there really isn’t much more to add. We’ve already traveled this section of it. So I guess I’ll give you a biology lesson instead. Starlings aren’t native to the U.S. They were brought here from Europe by a guy named Eugene Scheffland back in 1890. He wanted to introduce all the birds that were ever mentioned in Shakespeare’s writings. Starlings nest twice a year with an average brood of 4-6. Asian carp seem minor compared to the starling plague unleashed by Scheffland.

The locks remain the main factor in how long it takes for us to travel each day. If we knew where barges were in relation to the lock we could plan our speed better to avoid waiting at the locks. Leave it to Tami to find a website on her I-phone that lists activity at each lock. Between her info and Mark’s calculations we could make our travel much more efficient.

This is a tow that radioed us to warn us that he had lost his steering.   

This meant that he had lost an engine. Hence the black smoke. He was waiting for help and was just trying to maintain it in position. His cargo is something volatile so it is referred to as “red flag”. Somewhere on each barge is a small metal red flag marking it such.

We stayed the night at the Lindsay Park Yacht Club at Davenport, Iowa. A beautiful marina. The first Loopers we ever met were Tom and Diann Lanum. This is their home marina. We had a joyful reunion catching up on one another. We had a wonderful meat at the club’s dining room. The members were all friendly, and of course Tom and Diann knew everyone.