Will it flood again?

I was really getting worried about it coming up again, especially after reading about Lake Delton draining at the Dells.  We love the Dells, as tacky as it is.   But Lake Delton escaped to the Wisconsin River, which drains to the Mississippi at Prairie du Chien WI and McGregor IA.  So it is heading down [...]

Going down!

Kim, and her brother Chris and their little sister Heidi decided they just had to get a log out of the river by the dock right before the party.   That was danger right there.  Then my sister Mary decided to wander out and help them, oh, not a wise choice.  Fortunately, Chris is an Army [...]

Barges, docks and nice weather

The barges are back: The entertainment area is up in front of the cottage: It is turned away from the river because of bad wind that day. The dock is back out, but not connected.  The gangway has been fished out from the river and reinstalled.  We are waiting delivery of our aluminum gangway. Come [...]

Boat lift levitates!!

Crane arrives: Now it has to go out to the lift: Okay, now it has to get that thing out of there.  It is stuck in the Mississippi River mud: There was a 50 foot log stuck on the bottom.  We never would have gotten it out of there without the crane. Now it is [...]

River is down, down

The river has dropped three feet here already, just a week after flood stage.  The dock went half way out today, on purpose.  We have been frantic busy.  We moved all the stuff back down to the cottage and we are here for the summer.  I can’t take a picture of the empty garage in [...]

Bringing in the dock

  We are getting ready for a possible flood.  Today Kim and a neighbor John pulled the poles out of the dock and swung the sections into shore.  They then tied the dock to upstream trees with very substantial ropes.  The boat lift is still out in the river, but a float is under it [...]

Plastic dock

We installed a type of dock called Connect a Dock, which has been the object of much observation since we put it in two years ago.  And even better, it is made here in the Hawkeye state of Iowa.  Here is link to the website of the manufacturer: http://www.connectadock.com/home.asp

Log threatens dock

A big log is pointed right at our dock, about ten feet from shore.  We do not even know how it got there since it had to manuever between our neighbor’s dock and ours.  Right now it is not a threat because it is hung up in the Mississippi mud and not going anywhere.  We need to [...]

Dock falls apart

Kim ventured out on the dock to discover that it had separated in three spots, but that it was still held in place by the posts we sunk into the Mississippi mud.  She took her ratchet and went out and tried to tighten it down.  It was a bit windy that day.  Wave to Kim.