"Are you going all the way?” asked the voice from above. “I’m going to try,” I replied, looking up at the sole of a work boot at the lip of the concrete and above that a bearded face hanging over the railing. The immense tub of the lock engulfed me as I held onto a line dangling from 20’ above. The gray concrete walls stretched 1,200’ alongside my 17’ dory LITTLE JOY, and had long, heavy scrapes down their length, the scars left by the barges that pass through this lock around the clock. Sealed in on each end by battleship-gray steel gates, the water drained, dropping me another 11’. The Mel Price lock and dam, just downstream from Alton, Illinois, is the newest, busiest, and longest lock on the Mississippi River. More importantly to me, it is the last lock on the river.The blast of an air horn made me jump as it echoed down the chamber--the all-clear signal. I rowed past the downriver gates and out into the churning river just below the dam and spillway. After a quick survey to get my bearings and check for river traffic, I pointed LITTLE JOY south. I was now free, like the river, to make my way to the Gulf of Mexico.I had put LITTLE JOY in the river just a mile and a half above the lock and dam at the Alton marina, the very same place where I had taken out one year before when I rowed LITTLE JOY 650 miles from Minneapolis down to Alton (see “Downriver, Part 1” ).

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