It was an easy morning with great weather, we ate our lunch (cheerios and trail mix with some granola bars) outside of a little community that we could not find on the map after paddling about 20 miles.
We knew we wanted to make it to Dubuque for the night so we stayed on the water most of the day. What turned out to be perfect weather turned out to be our most miserable night of the trip. The final stretch to Lock # 11 was dark, rainy, and cold. I screamed Simple Man at the top of my lungs during the hour of paddling it took us to cross it, only to wait for a barge to go through once reaching the lock.
From there we illegally parked our kayak at a marina and headed to a bar where we could hear live music. Unfortunately I was not 21 at the time and even though we explained to the guard that we had just paddled 54 miles to reach Dubuque, he would not let us in.
So we hiked to the nearest gas station for some food, but as soon as we got inside it started raining. After running back to our kayaking (which was slowly filling with water) we paddled in the dark across the river because we heard there was a campground. Eventually we found it and set up camp quicker than we ever had. It was the hardest day.