C-Brats "Meet in the Middle" Mississippi River Gathering

My pesky brother-in-law guilted me out of my laziness to begin blogging again... and so, weeks later, here I am posting from Alton Illinois.

We made our way through Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.. and found "damn Isaac". I apologized to him and told him I would try to call him "dear Isaac" in the future... if he sent some clues my way.  And he did.  I think he had a brother or cousin named Jacob and his father was Samuel.  His uncle may have been John.  And we learned a funny story about Samuel who was there back in the early days of Ft Lexington fighting off Indians....getting captured with his buckskins down... But that's not the purpose of this blog, so.. back to boats.

We are now in Alton Illinois, a small town on the Mississippi and we have 13 C-Brats gathered here to chat, eat, swim, tour each other's boats, and eat some more.

The flags are authentic WWII signal flags...very fun and festive

The event is technically Thursday to Sunday morning, but some, like us, got here early.  And we took a little cruise upriver to see the bluffs along the Mississippi that we had heard so much about.  We saw manycaves carved in the bluffs and I couldn't help thinking of Tom and Becky, Huck and Big Jim.

There were a few buildings along the river road but most, like these, built way up on the bluffs.  The marina where we are staying is all floating docks, even the office, restrooms and , yes, The Swimming Pool... are on floating barges... and the pilings are at least two stories high.  From what we've read, the river has flooded routinely up into the parking lot... and the very worst floods have gone up the road, onto the main street.

We C-Brats love to take pictures of each other!

We were just puttering along when all of the sudden there was a crash along the side of my window.  We wondered what we'd hit... but it was more like... what hit us!  Flying Fish?!!  I later learned they were silver carp.  Boats engines scare them and once one started jumping; they all jumped... there must have been over a hundred of them... jumping 4 ft off the water.  Some were quite large... maybe two or three ft.  Apparently they can get to be 40 lbs.  I took these pictures off the internet as we were so flabbergasted and surprised, we didn't grab the cameras!

These are invasive species which have become a big problem in recent years.  There are bow and arrow "tournaments" as well as a Red Neck Tournament with nets.  You can't catch them with a line, but its no problem catching them if you want to, as they will jump into your boat.  We had a big one jump into our motor well.  As we stared at it, wondering how to get it out.. it flopped its way to the other side and escaped.  Man, was it ever slimy and stinky!  We had never heard of these flying fish and our adrenaline was pumping for an hour afterwards.  It still seems unreal.  Personally, I thought it was as fun as seeing the dolphins in Charleston Bay.

Today many are going on a tour of the locks and to a river museum.  And tonight is a big barbeque where some of the C-Brats have brought specialty sausages from their homes in Amish country, upper state NY,or from up in Wisconsin or down in Texas.  Seriously, folks have traveled over 1,000 miles to get here.  They are a dedicated bunch and we are fledglings.  One couple has put on over 14,000 miles BOATING on their C-Dory.  Hard to comprehend.  At this point, we have boated about 1,000 miles and put about 8,000 on the SUV.

Tomorrow the group is cruising down to St Louis, through 2 locks and next to the big arch.  Maybe we'll see more attack fish?  (I hope so, it was pretty neat!)

 Then, on Sunday, we are headed home.  Others are boating from here to Little Rock AK.  C-Brats are always going somewhere.