Day 43

Day 43
Another early start, it seems that there is some kind of river tradition in Keokuk IA that around 5 AM as everyone who works on the river had has a horn or whistle at their work station blows it to say good morning world. It starts with that one guy who is always at work before everyone else, toot! no answer. Then he notices that tug down the river fire up and gives him a toot on the horn, of course tug guy answers back. This goes on for about an hour of so as more and more cranes operators, tug captains, elevator operators, bridge control operators and such arrive till the late guy gets there and toots hello and everyone answers back one last time. I didn't really mind it so much since it was a slow wake up and I was actually laughing as I loaded the boat and set off to do my days work on the river as well. This section of river had some FAST current, I stayed over against the shore almost in the trees to avoid the morning sun and was really excited as I blasted past all the raccoons, eagles, birds  and deer before they could see me coming. In three and half hours I covered 21 miles of river, I don't think I would want to go that fast all the time but it was a nice break from the ordinary. After passing the lock at the end of this section I could tell it was going to be another HOT day so I pulled into Canton Missouri to do laundry and eat. I cleaned out the boat again, something that has to be done every two or three days because sand and mud is always getting in. I also took a river bath at the boat ramp putting on the last clean items I had. I put my dirty clothes and water container in a backpack and walked the few hundred yards to town, I quickly found the coin laundry and got that started while also plugging in the head lamp and VHF radio in to charge behind the coke machine and out of sight. I ate a nice lunch at the Mexican restaurant before collecting my clean clothes and heading back to the river. When I returned I decided I did not want to paddle because of the heat so I cleaned the tent, patched my air mattress, organized the food bag, all in the shade of the cotton wood trees in the park. As I was repacking everything I noticed the radio was still behind the coke machine in town. I walked back to the laundry mat and collected my forgotten items. A store down the street caught my eye, a second hand/junk store, I had to take a look because I had an idea I wanted to try out. I walked around the large store for some time not finding what I needed. A nice man asked if I was looking for anything in particular? I said I was paddling the river and wanted an umbrella and a pair of vice grips to make a sun shade. He was very excited to help me and after a few minutes I had both items in hand. He refused to take my money but said I had to meet his friend up front. I talked to the two gentlemen for about 30 minute about my trip, the river, weather and fishing before moving along. As I was walking to the river a truck stopped by me and it was the guy from the store, he said he had a larger golf umbrella or a beach umbrella if that was better, I told him I thought they would catch too much wind but thank you. Back at the boat the 10 mph wind had finally arrived and it was blowing from the north! I jumped in the boat and paddled for the shade of the west shore, letting the wind push me along and trying to keep me cool. I paddled for the rest of the afternoon like this, sweating and hot but nothing lake the last week plus. Around 6:30 I rounded a bend and saw the bridge for Quincy IL ahead, I knew the lock was just passed this point and no camping passed the bridge so I started looking. I found a nice small sand beach and made a simple camp with no fire, took another river bath and made a dinner of Alfredo sauce, noodles and canned chicken. I was asleep before it was dark.