Home stretch: the Jonk loiters below Lock and Dam 1

Minnesota River: lovely to look at but you wouldn't want to swim there

We saw a lot of this egret

Day Nine: Getting his unabomber on

The walleye that swallowed my last nightcrawler at Pike Island backwater

Carp boated in backwater of Pike Island

Midnight surgeon

Fearing winds, we hunkered down in the shadow of the Mendota Bridge for three days

15 hp: surprisingly, up to the task of shoving the Jonk up the Mississippi

Giving wide berth to a tow on Pool 2

Cormorants

Grey cloud at Grey Cloud Island

The backwater of Grey Cloud Island where we moored for a night

View from port window: a big wide spot in the Mississippi north of Hastings

Passing tow above Lock and Dam 2

What Jonk never did: We head back up the Mississippi

Terry scrutinizes the nemesis of our top heavy houseboat: the pleasure craft armada of the rich

Encountered on the hike to Bayport

J examines jagoff tsunami on the St. Croix

After the storm, the mountains of the midwest

Cloud burst, rainbow

weather paparazzi

Gathering storm, Bayport

Hudson swing bridge

Afflicted with an advanced case of houseboat fever, Terry contemplated buying this pile in Hudson

Lake St. Croix -- idyllic until the holiday pleasure boat armada descended

Kinnicinic Sandbar, our first camp spot on the St. Croix

Port side, newly adorned with hubcaps

TV, barometer, shaving mirror, spider window

Jonk interior

Terry basks as we head up the St. Croix

The mighty Evinrude 15 hp: it pushed the Jonk 130 miles and never flagged

Barges menaced the Jonk but not so much as pleasure craft

Jonk moored at the public dock in Hastings

Lock and Dam 2, Hastings

Terry shoots a pelican above the Hastings dam

The Ashland refinery, across from Newport Island

Newport Island, where we arrived in darkness and spent the night

Sunset over St. Paul viewed from Jonk's stern hatch

River, train, bluff, east side of St. Paul