26MAY2012 @ Cape Girardeau, MO - I had over 40 ripe lucious blackberries for supper.  It would be more accurate to call them dessert on top of my peanut butter, apple and pimento cheese supper. I am camped at the base of a riprapped bank upon which blackberries are displayed in a simply devine manner.  Footing is iffy, but the reward is great.  There are basically nothing but blackberry plants here, and they are small/short so that walking among them is merely a matter of balance ... thorns are not a concern.  Moreover, the rocks hold heat which probably helps the growth and ripening ... great place to set up camp. 
Beginning at about 1000 from Cape Girardeau, I endured 22 miles into the wind then 14 miles of relatively unwindy progress.  Some of the final 14 miles were wind aided as I made the first loop of the big S curve above Cairo.  Thursday's wind was far more intense than today, so don't feel any sympathy for me ... just know that a double digit wind speed is a factor with regard to the energy expended as well as the downstream progress.
The most notable point to me today is that I saw very few boats.  Very few barges but also very few motorboats even though it is Memorial Day Saturday.  That's curious.  Maybe hot and windy keeps sportsfolk with their motorboats at home.       
Today I paddled from river mile 52 to river mile 16, a distance of 36 river miles.  I saw ducks, herons and turtles.  At the end of the day after supper I immersed in the Mississippi river.  It felt awesome to cool down before bed ... I stayed in for maybe twenty minutes to assure that I was not just cool, but COMPLETELY cool.  While doing this I had to move my feet a lot ... else some fish found my toes too interesting.  I notice no mosquitoes but I'm tented anyway. 
While the horizon still showed some light an upstream barge passed and stayed about 1/4 mile upstream for over a half hour.  It was having trouble negotiating the left turn and it worked it's way right, left, downstream, left, right ... basically it moved all over until finally it was properly aligned and motored on.  All the while it was doing this it was spinning turbulence down toward me and the canoe.  Though tethered well, my canoe was bobbed about in this turbulence; I was pleased when the barge moved on.  Sleep came easy after that.