October 7th. Day 5. Cassville to Bellevue

We awoke adrift! The strong winds that Wade described yesterday steadily pushed us away from the shore through the night - this first picture shows where we were supposed to be. At first we were afraid that we'd lost the anchors, but no. The one off the front was dangling in the water not doing much of anything but the back anchor was still in place and we were swaying back and forth from the end of it in the channel. New lesson learned! On top of anchors we are also going to tie off on something.

Turned out to be an absolutely beautiful day - not exactly warm, but very sunny and hardly a cloud in the sky all day. I started off at the tiller for the first few hours and had a fantastic view. On the Iowa side of the Mississippi there were huge houses nestled in the hillsides and on the Wisconsin side were the limestone bluffs. We went through Lock and Dam No. 11, had another drawbridge opened for us, and stopped in Dubuque. We didn't really get very far at all (only 30 miles all day actually) but we had essential matters to attend to. After 5 days of being dirty and smelly it was shower time! One of the marina's in Dubuque was kind enough to let us use theirs free of charge (he could probably smell us and couldn't help but take pity). It was GLORIOUS! We all felt like new people! Except Jenny. She couldn't get her shower to warm up so instead of wasting time waiting for it to warm she proceeded to shave just one leg while she waited. Well, since the water was freezing she had goosebumps all over and ended up somehow shaving several of them off. She was a bloody mess! Gross, huh? Only Jenny... The other picture is of me putting our towels on a makeshift clothesline.

We spent a little time in Dubuque - we went to the Diamond Joe Casino for lunch, but they wouldn't let Jenny in because she wasn't 21 so we settled for burgers instead. Then we stopped in at the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium. It was super cool and we felt guilty for it but ended up spending a lot more time there than expected. There were three dimensional, hands on displays to bring to life the past 300 years of history of the Mississippi: fur traders, lead mining, steamboats (which Wade greatly enjoyed), logging, clamming, and the natural scenic beauty of the Mississippi River. I think for both Jenny and I, we enjoyed the wildlife the most. There were aligators, lizards, otters, turtles, birds, MONSTER catfish and every other kind of fish and even an albino snapping turtle! We drove a barge simulator and Wade tried to ram the other barges without success, toured a paddleboat, went through the evolution of the riverboat museum, and took a million pictures of the animals!

It was pretty amusing that when we got back to the sailboat (we had docked in such a way that we cut off half of the docking area), and our little boat was being completely dwarfed by a huge yacht! I was surprised it didn't just plow us out of the way!

Dubuque marked the end of the Wisconsin border on the left side of the river, so now we are bordering Iowa and Illinois! We found a spot about a half hour from Bellevue and decided to stay there for the night versus risking showing up at Lock and Dam No. 12 in the dark. Hope to make up time from today tomorrow!