Friday, September 5.  We’re in Lock and Dam 4, where we met Jim, a fellow who is “going around the horn”.  He left Stillwater Sept. 1, and plans to be on the Gulf of Mexico Dec. 1.  From the Missisissipi, he’ll take the Ohio River east, follow that to the Tenntom Waterway, south on the Arkansas, and onto the gulf at Mobile, AL.  He’ll take the intercoastal waterway south to Key West, up the eastern coast of the U.S., west onto  the Hudson River.  Then he’ll continue on Lakes Erie and Ontario, onto the TransCanada Waterway, and from there I don’t remember how he got home to Stillwater.  But my gosh, what an adventure, and in such a little boat!

 It was foggy this morning on Lake Pepin.  We are listening to one of the barge captains tell the lockmaster that when he pulled onto Lake Pepin, it was just like a curtain came down around him.  We were lucky, by the time we were ready to get underway, the fog was gone and the sun is now shining like crazy.  The air is soft and just warm enough.  We had a breakfast of chicken and shitake mushroom quiche at the Great River Cafe.

 We ate at the Harbor View Café last night.  It’s a gourmet restaurant that brings in folks from the Twin Cities, 90 miles away.  The cafe doesn’t take reservations or credit cards.

 The wide windows in each of the two dining rooms overlook the marina with all its beautiful sailboats, and Lake Pepin beyond.  The lake is actually a long, wide part of the Mississippi River, ideal for sailing.  The menu at the Harbor View is based on the availability of local produce and meats, and the freshest seafood that can be flown or trucked in.  Like in a bistro, the daily menu is hand-written on chalkboards on the wall.  We ordered Stuffed Mushrooms with Linguini, and Norwegian Meatballs with a Sour Cream Cardamom Sauce.  Delish!  A wide selection of beers, international and local, is offered, but we opted for glasses of Pinot Grigio. 
 

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Pepin the village (pop.900) and Pepin the lake are named for the Pepin brothers, French fur traders whose father was given a huge piece of land in the Upper Mississippi River Valley by King Louis VIII of France in the late 1600s.

Two decades after the village was platted, in 1856, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about her family’s lives in her book “Little House in the Big Woods”.  There is a small museum in town that commemorates her.  Pepin is celebrating its sesquicentennial this year.

 We took our sweet time getting into port last evening because we’d rather be on the water than in port.  Our cloudy sky yesterday was due to Hurricane Gustav, whose effects are this far-ranging.  We have been on Pepin in 2-3 foot swells in past trips, but the lake was calm this time.  Dan’s Pepin Marina is beautiful and spotless. 

So, we have left the storybook village of Pepin behind, and are heading south to tonight’s home port of La Crosse, WI.  There are 5 locks and dams between Pepin and La Crosse, so we’ve got our fingers crossed that we won’t come across barges entering any of them.