Monday, August 10,2009 Day 6

We had a very nice time in Dubuque with visiting the Mississippi River Museum and Aquirium. We certainly learned much about the river. One of the interesting things was that a normal barge tow has 15 barges connected together infront of the barge tow boat. Those 15 barges can haul the same as 840 semi trucks! That's a bunch. The horsepower on a tow boat ranges from 4,800 to 6,480 hp and it can take them a mile and a half to come to a stop when the barges are full. You do not want to get in their way!

We met some very nice people at the Marina by Catfish Charlies (very neat place) Thanks for letting us park amoungst your beautiful 50 ft. Express and the 65? ft. Carver. They certainly are gorgeous boats. Wish we could have spent more time with you!

Al Kracke, thank you for letting us know of Catfish Charlies. It is right with the American Marina. We heard your message after we were already parked there! Again, thanks for the help you did give us - we stayed at the Hilton the last two nights (really roughing it!!)

Storms hit when we were at the Museum but the boats fared well. It was a good day to take off from being on the water (preplanned) so that worked out well because we would have had to take off the day anyway.

Now we are on the way to Clinton, Iowa. We celebrated Don's birthday today (10,080 minutes late, his birthday was last Monday) right after we went thru Lock and Dam #12. Memories in the making!

We just hit our 300 mile mark! We've used 65 .591 gallons of gasoline, With the eleven of twelve locks we've gone thru, the river has dropped 94 feet and last but not least so far we've used 88 pounds of ice! (these little facts are for our boat alone)

One of these days, we'll be loading a bunch of pictures!

Love to all. Talk to you later. Bye