Day 35: W 10/17- Beaten by a barge

Wednesday brought another overcast, but warm day of paddling. We were still headed through the Upper Mississippi Wildlife Refuge and it was mostly woods and small islands with a couple of small towns scattered through the day.
As we consulted the maps in the morning we decided to take a short cut leading up to lock 13. Pool 13 is full of small islands on either side and the channel runs through the middle of the for the most part. We decided to stay on the west bank instead and skirt around most of the islands, hoping to cut off a couple of miles.
This route took us through prime bird hunting spots and we saw several boats pulling in and setting up as we paddled through. We came through early enough not to get in the way and were back into the channel before the evening shooting started.
After we rejoined the main channel the visibility was rather poor. It was starting to get a bit foggy-misty-rainy and we weren't sure exactly where the Sam was until we were quite close to it. It finally decided to rain as we were a mile or less from the dam, but it was pretty light and not too cold so we were ok.
We had planned on getting through the dam just before dark and setting up on the other side. But, alas, as we finally got close enough to see the lock we also saw a sneaky little barge approaching from the south. At this point it was too close to dark to wait or him to be locked, so we had to camp on the near side.
There was a small peninsula off the to the left of the dam, but everything on the channel side was high Rick embankment, no good for beaching our beastly canoe. We paddled around to the other side, but it was full of lotus and marsh grass so we had to wrestle it up through that to get to the bank. By the time we got unloaded and were setting up the rain had decided to really come down and brought along its friend wind as well. We were pretty well soaked and a bit disheartened by the time we got in the tent, but dry clothes, warm sleeping bags and some chicken noodle soup did us wonders! We did check the maps and see we had made 29 miles for the day which made us feel better. We got to sleep early as we listened to that pesky north bound barge make its way through the lock.