Lock and Dam #1

Today I spent the day on the Mississippi river. We parked at Hidden Falls city park. I had never come across this beauty of a park before. I will be sure to go there again. Hidden Falls is just south of Ford Parkway off of Mississippi Blvd. We were taken in a van to the University of Minnesota campus just below the U of M hospital. We were a group of about 24 and we split into 3 large voyager canoes. I was in the lead canoe. We canoed the gorge. We were told that downtown Minneapolis has the only gorge on the Mississippi. I would have thought the bluff area in southeastern Minnesota and along Iowa would have a gorge but the bluffs are on one side and the other side usually has a flood plain, making this the only gorge. I thought it was a gorgeous gorge. We saw about a dozen great blue herons, a great white egret, 4 turkey vultures, one bald eagle, 10 cormorants, 3 mallards, a killdeer, a bunch of crows, a female cardinal, bank swallows, tree swallows, cliff swallows, and a kingfisher. I was most excited to see the kingfisher because it's been on my list of birds I haven't seen yet. We saw sugar maples, silver maples (that show their whitish back sides), hackberry, catalpa trees, sumac, cottonwoods and elms. We stopped for lunch on some sand flats. These sand flats were created by dredging the river so the barges could get through. They were covered with spotted knapweed - an invasive species that thrives on disturbed soil. Some of the naturalists pulled a few up by the roots and felt better. There was surprisingly little traffic on the river. We saw 4 other boats. The Mississippi downtown is nothing like the St. Croix River. The St. Croix is crowded with boat traffic on a sunny Saturday. Before we knew it we had gone under the Lake Street bridge, a railroad bridge, and the Ford Parkway bridge. We were at lock and dam #1. Golly, I was excited. Since we were in the lead canoe we got to pull the rope signalling we wanted to go through. We were told we had to wait 10-15 minutes for the lock to fill. To hold our canoe in position, I put my finger in a hole in the cement so we wouldn't rub against the wall and wouldn't get too far away from the wall. A sign said LASF 6 miles with an arrow pointing left and Lock & Dam #2 36 miles with an arrow pointing right. We thought the LASF meant lock at St. Anthony Falls. LASF is the first lock and dam on the river. Funny it isn't called #1. Lock & Dam #2 is at Hastings. Eventually we got the green light and could proceed. We allowed a speedboat to go in first so we wouldn't have to deal with it's wake. When we got into position, a man above threw a coil of thick rope to us. The guy in front of me got to hold the rope and allow it to pass through his hands as we were lowered anywhere between 35 and 39 feet. He had a lot of rope at his feet. The huge doors shut behind us and down we went. I could see the speedboat ahead of us go down and couple feet and then I felt our canoe go down a couple feet. In the photo you can see the white concrete at the top of the wall. That is where we started from. As the water receded little critters including shrimp could be seen clinging to the algae slime. The time went fast but I suppose we were in there about 15 minutes. Finally a bell rang and the doors were opened. We left our watery concrete room and headed down and across to Hidden Falls park. I want to canoe through town again. The best part of the trip was being with people who enjoy nature.