Gammy and I had nothing to do today and since it was a nice day, we decided to head down to the river.

There is a lock and dam not too very far from where we live. We've been down there several times before just to sit and look at the river while the tug boats chug by pushing barges loaded with who knows what.

The Mississippi has been running low for a couple of months now. On the south side of St Louis, there are sand bars that project a good distance toward the middle.

At the dam there is a camping site and a walkway almost a half mile down to the river. During the spring and summer it is lush and the trees canopy the walkway. During the winter, however, the trees are completely bare.

They are all some deciduous sort that doesn't mind being wet. It often floods here in the spring. Some of the trees looked like they may have had high water marks as far as 10 feet up their trunks.

There is a boat ramp at the trail head. It was closed. If you look at the bottom of the ramp you'll see a big mound of mud that would prevent someone from backing a trailer in to launch a boat.

Here's a shot of the lock and dam from the down stream side.

Down by the river there are two circles of big stones. One circle is a fire pit. The other is to sit on. I forgot to take photos of these.

This is a short video I shot there.

The photos and video are not color corrected. I didn't think to do that until after I uploaded them.

Thanks for stopping by.