Day 10: Winona MN -> St Cloud MN

Checking my e-mail yesterday evening after checking into the Winona Super 8.  Apparently I cancelled my reservation at quarter to five that evening.  It is difficult to see how this could be the case since at that particular time I was still driving up US-14.  Hopefully, since They think I didn't stay there, I won't get charged for it.

Only about 200 miles to cover today so I thought I'd have a shufti at Lock & Dam #5 just up the road.

Dam and blast!

As luck would have it, a barge tow was approaching the lock, so time for a spot of gongoozling:

The locks on the river 600 feet long^[1] and 110 wide while the navigable channel is dredged to a depth of 9 feet.  The thing enters the lock at something less than a walking pace and ICBA to wait for the procedure to complete.

Another side effect of the lock'n'dam business is that the Upper Mississippi is effectively a chain of lakes, including this one:

Lake Pepin

at the imaginatively-named Lake City.  And what do you do if you have a lake like that?  In this case, you invent water skiing, or so the signs claim.

And don't forget to wash down your boat afterwards...

The Man is anxious to stop the spread of invasive species, y'see, particularly zebra mussels and Asian carp.

Next stop Minneapolis.  And no, I didn't know about the mass shooting there the other day.  I headed for St Anthony Falls, which is the head of navigation on the river since The Man closed the neighbouring lock to keep those pesky Asian carp out of the upper reaches of the river.  History, and bridges, abound, and mercifully it was somewhat cooler than it had been while faffing about at the lock.  It even made a half-hearted attempt at raining but lacked the stamina to make anything of it.

The falls, with Central Avenue bridge

I-35W bridge; replaced the one which collapsed into the river in 2007

The area was a centre for flour production

"Unmissable!" - Chris Waddle

While it would have been possible to spend a lot longer prowling the Minneapolis waterfront I decided to push off sharpish, because it's a holiday weekend.  Sadly half the population of Minneapolis also decided that it's POETS^[2] Day and traffic on I-94 was bad.  Traffic getting off I-94 was worse because of terrible synchronisation of traffic lights in Monticello.  Still, it;s not all doom and gloom because my room here not only occupies more real estate than Larrington Towers, it also overlooks the Somewhat-Less-Than-Mighty Mississippi:

1. A couple of them downstream have a double-length main lock in addition to the 600' one.
2. Piss Off Early Tomorrow's Saturday.  Obv.