On the River: Some mornings we wake up and are already docked at our new port, others like today we are still cruising downriver at mid-morning. Our destination today is Dubuque, IA. We should arrive soon.
I enjoy daytime cruising as the changing scene on the riverbanks is fun to watch. In this stretch it is sometimes wooded bluffs along the river and other places it is a low-lying slough or swampy area.
What I have to remember is that the current was more swift when Mark Twain wrote about rafting. Now it is controlled by the locks and dams which maintain navigability depth by creating what are effectively a series of shallow-ish lakes connected by locks.
When Huck and Jim were rafting none of these existed. Then the river flowed free, dropping 700+ ft. from its elevation near St. Paul to sea level at the Gulf.
Dubuque, IA: We’ve arrived at roughly 11:30 a.m. and maybe a half hour ago I saw my first commercial traffic on the river. It was a “pusher” with 8 barges lashed together 3-3-2, headed upriver. Barges here don’t get towed, they are pushed, mostly in groups, by tugs of a sort with flat bows.
Mind you, I don’t claim that is the first commercial traffic we’ve passed, only the first I’ve seen. We could have passed dozens whilst I slept the sleep of the just.
In Europe barges are mostly powered and travel as a single unit. They have a dwelling at the stern in which the family who own it live and they are also the crew.
This model hasn’t caught on here, not certain why. Our barges are unpowered floating boxes, often with lids, that get roped together in groups and pushed by a crewed push boat with a big engine.
