Thursday Oct 12th - We're in Alton Illinois on the Mississippi River. The bridge over the Mississippi at Alton is really beautiful (that's half of it in the picture, taken at the Alton Marina from the bow of Nonchalance. The last 3 days have been all river travel, anchoring out, no marinas, on our own with the river. It makes you kind of closer to nature. No cell phone coverage much of the time, but not much need for phones either.

We did have some excitement with the dinghy, which we use to take Daisy for walks morning noon and night. Two nights ago we were anchored in a chute (long alternate waterway around a big island) and we had the dinghy tied to the swim platform ladder of Nonchalance. In the morning after we took Daisy, the wind came up and was blowing Nonchalance dangerously close to the shore of the narrow channel, so I decided to fire up the engines and back move the stern towards center channel. When I did, the dinghy rope came off the swim ladder and the dinghy started heading down the chute towards the main river channel. We had to weigh anchor quickly and go after it! Luckily, the wind came up again and blew the dinghy back up the chute towards us and Kathy was able to hook it with our long boathook by standing on the bow pulpit. I'm glad she did because I had my swimsuit out and was going to swim after it if we couldn't safely get close with the big boat. BRRRRRR.......

Last night, we anchored in front of a beautiflu island and right across the main channel from a nice sand and shell beach we could dinghy to. When we got up to do that this morning, we were scraping frost off the dinghy seats to take Daisy. Then when we came back, I let a dock line slip out and trail from the dinghy and it got wrapped around the prop. It would back up but not go forward, but after 5 minutes of backing against the current and getting water in the boat from the automatic deck drain holes, which let out the back, I tilted up the motor and luckily was able to unwrapp the line, after which the dinghy worked fine. Kathy was expecting a huge barge to come around the bend any minute and run us over. When she saw the water coming in from from the deck drains, she was reaching for the life jackets........... Of course, as soon as we went forward, the water ran back out. Oh well, that's how you learn not to make those dumb mistakes.

Everything else on the boat has worked well.........I'll keep my fingers crossed and my tools handy. I brought lots of tools.

The rivers and the palisades on the Mississippi have been beautiful. The fall colors are just starting to really show, which makes that first harmonizing mixture of the green trees still left with the reds and yellows of the first to go. We've seen a number of bald eagles, lots of white pelicans, ospreys, etc. all fishing on the river.

We'll spend the next 3 or 4 days in St. Louis. Our son, Mike will join us tomorrow evening. Tonight, we met Jim Grove, a friend from the Hatteras Owners Forum. Jim and his friend George took us to dinner at a very nice restaurant. Jim will loan us a car tomorrow and maybe he and his wife, Dudley, will come with us to see the city. Jim lives in St. Louis, has his 50 ft. Hatteras in Ft. Lauderdale and takes it to the Bahamas in Spring. He took it up the east coast to Nova Scotia this summer....quite a trip.