Thu, Aug 30th – Hellrung's House and Alton, IN

The Campbell’s left for home this morning where they will close on the sale of their lake house at Lake Webster, IN tomorrow. We got to be the last ones to camp there. In the afternoon, we visited the statue of the tallest man in the world—Robert Wadlow who was 5’6” at age 5, 6’5” and 200 lbs at age 10, which made him the largest Boy Scout in the world, and 8’ll.1” and 490 lbs when he died at the age of 22. Then we toured the Melvin Price Lock and Dam and the National Great Rivers Museum where we were fortunate enough to get to see a tow with barges going thru the lock. Go to http://www.mvr.usace.army.mil/ to get information about the daily traffic and tonnage through the locks. Click on “Get lock and vessel info,” then “OMNI Reports”; then “Reports”, and then choose a report to run. Report 3a is popular because it shows the daily vessel lockages. Think about this as you drive the roads of America: 1 barge going up or down the Mississippi is the equivalent of 58 semi trucks that are NOT on our roads! A 15-barge tow, which was like what we saw on the river, is equivalent to 870 semis! You can see just how important our rivers are.