Dubuque, Iowa

Saturday
When we were going through the lock right before Dubuque we noticed Go Sea Monkey Go and raftthemississippi.com was written on the wall inside the lock. We all thought that was pretty cool. We arrived in the evening and met up with Revy, Jen, Pete, and Lisa. We tied the Sea Monkey up in the marina beside Revy's houseboat. Pete and Revy had made a bet that if we make it to Dubuke Pete has to kiss Revy's butt. So Pete being a man of his word climbed aboard the Sea Monkey and did just that. Right beforehand Pete put tons of chap stick on to form a shield. We all had a good laugh. We hung out a Revy's houseboat for awhile, went to the Yard Arm bar on shore than went to bed.

Sun
The next day we headed out to Schumacher beach a couple miles out of town on Revy's boat at around noon. The beach filled up with other boats and had lots of fun ensued. Chuck let us ride his 1200cc jet ski, that was a blast. Some generous beach goers donated some food to the journey also, thanks again. The night before Lisa told us she was going to make us anything we wanted for dinner the next day. I requested Salmon and Josh asked for Lasagna, Ben said he'd eat anything she made. We left the beach at around 5 and headed for Pete and Lisa's houseboat for dinner. Their boat was pretty much the opposite of the Sea Monkey. 60' long, 2 bathrooms, and nicer than most houses on land. The meal was so good, we were all very thankful. After dinner T-Bone gave us some fresh vegetables from his Tri-State market in East Dubuque, IL and Tom gave us some fishing tackle. Everybody was so generous, it was great. We slept at Skippers house on dry land that night.

Mon
The next day we painted teeth on the splash guard on the Sea Monkey. They turned out pretty good, the Sea Monkey should stick out even more than it already does now. Tom stopped by the raft and showed Josh how to use some of the tackle he gave us. Josh got 3 fish within 5 minutes. After that Chuck welded our broken anchor back together and Skipper took us to a boat store so we could buy some oil. There was a 40' speedboat with dual supercharged 602ci engines that were so clean you could eat off of them. Being from lake country I'd never seen a boat like that before. We went to a couple bars headed back to raft and prepared for an early start.