Day 22: R 10/4- First locks & a new river

We left Banfill island as early as possible, without breakfast. We paddled hard into the wind and stopped at a little access for a cold breakfast. We made it a quick stop because the access offered no break from the wind and we had a big day ahead of us.
Paddling through upper Minneapolis was a lot of industry. A little bit dingy with a lot of graffiti. The wind was strong and coming from the west, which tired my left arm significantly from trying to keep the boat straight.
We finally made it to our very first lock! We were nervous that we would screw it up, and maybe we did. We found the signal rope and gave it a pull. A voice came over the speaker, telling us that it would be fifteen minutes or so. We backed up to a walkway thing so that we could hang on with our having to constantly battle the wind. The traffic light blinked red for a while and then turned off which confused us but we decided to hang tight. After 45 min we decided to go ahead and signal again. We received the same response essentially. This time the gates did open and we entered and were dircted to some ropes for us to hang on to. One of the workers eventually came over to tell us that we shouldn't leave after pulling the cord. We told him that we hadn't and he then apologized and told us that they had lost sight of us. Altogether it was a pretty simple experience, one that would occur again another few hundred yards down the channel. This time we got through sin 20min, without a hitch.
Paddling through the rest of Miniapolis was pleasant park scenery starting into so rock bluffs and more interesting graffiti under every bridge.
While the first two locks were the St. Anthony Locks, we would also be going through the Army Corp of Engineers Lock and Dam #1. We made it through this without a problem as well and got to chat with the guy working it for a bit. Out of the dam, it was back down the familiar river to St. Paul, although the river now contained buoys and barges.
Entering St. Paul by the river was very pretty, although the wind was still serving us a good bit of grief. We went by several cool paddle wheel boats and traversed through a marina, which offered many more interesting vessels to view. Eventually we came out of the beautifully manicured and graffiti free section, dropping us in the middle of dozens of tug boats and barges line both shores two to five deep for several miles.
The wind was growing fierce and we were already exhausted from the day, well short over our expectations. My left arms was struggling to work through muscle failure, and the light was retreating its final rays through the smog of St. Paul. We needed to find a place quickly.
We knew there was state land on a peninsula on the left side of the river. Eventually the line of moored barges broke and we took to the shore. The wind had developed into a monster, so we had to find some cover for fear the tent poles would snap. We found a spot just big enough at a little low point behind some high vegetation that we would refer to as the hole. With no fire, cold but protected; we made some Raman from the door of our tent.
While the day was full of trials from locks and barges to winds and poor camping location, we made it through and began a new section of river. Different from the river we knew before, we are out of the shallows, sand/gravel bars, and wonderful little DNR campsites and on to the big river.