Day 51: F 11/2- St Louis

We headed to St. Louis excited but a little nervous. After two short miles we came to the Missouri rivet and the start of the Chain of Rocks Canal. The canal is a ten-ish mile man made structure to avoid the Chain of Rocks. This is a natural geological escarpment as well as the remnants of an old low overhead dam. With the water so low we knew we couldn't navigate the rapids by the Chain, so decided to go down the canal and through lock and dam 27.
As we entered the canal, the MO river pushed us in and created some turbulent water. As soon as we entered the current nearly stopped and the waters calmed. We then saw a barge stretched across the canal an not moving. We waited, a bit nervously, a he repositioned and found a spot on te east bank. We finally snuck around him, thankful he didn't suddenly move again, and spent the rest of the canal dodging moored barges. We finally made it to the final lock, without being squished, and approached the doors. We got the green light and entered the huge lock chamber with no worker in sight. We never did see anyone, but eventually the lock drained and we were through the last lock of the river. Paddle high-five!
After we left the lock, the canal rejoined the main river and things really got going. We could tell immediately that the current was faster; we went cruising under bridges and past buildings and paddle through strong eddies. The next couple of miles took us past downtown St. Louis and the famous arch. We toyed with the idea of stopping for a visit, but contented ourselves with some pics and paddled on.
After the picturesque tourist sector we reentered barge country. There were miles of moored barges along either side of the narrow channel and numerous tugs zigging and zagging every which way. The wakes intersected and bounced off of the shore and barges and made a lovely chop soup. I was very nervous until we finally left this industrial area and found the open river once again.
We hadn't seen a mile marker since the last lock and were excited to see how far we had gone and if we could stop soon. When we finally spotted a marker we took guesses about our distance and Aaron won with an optimistic (read: silly) guess of 35. We were pleasantly surprised to see we had actually made it to mile 165, 33 miles for the day. We called it good then and there and made camp across from an industrial plant that ended up making sounds like a mechanical cow all night. But, we were very excited to see how quick the current was running after the last lock. It was a big day for us and we were excited to start the next, lockless, leg of our trip.