Day 24: 9/19/06

Near Trenton, WI a dredging barge passes us going upriver. Barges like this one pump sediment off the river bottom to maintain the 9-foot channel that commercial boats use. This changes the makeup of the natural river bottom, but we do enjoy the benefits of camping on islands made of dredged sand.

Joe and Ben take a break in Red Wing, MN. This river town is known for its pottery industry and historic downtown next to the river. At far left in this pic, you can see Barn Bluff, a conspicuous cliff on the Red Wing horizon. Both we and Henry David Thoreau have climbed it as a tourists and it offers a spectacular view of the river valley below. After listening to today’s weather report, we knew that we’d have a favorable wind as we approached Lake Pepin, so we decided to keep Joe’s tent fly handy. Ben sets up the fly as a makeshift sail prior to entering Pepin. He actually had to lean back to counterbalance the 20-30mph wind out of the northwest. We clocked ourselves moving between 8-9mph…Okay, so maybe that doesn’t seem very fast, but for a couple of guys traveling at 4-5mph the last three weeks, we felt like NASCAR drivers. (Sailing was much more fun than we imagine NASCAR driving to be.)