Tomorrow we head down the Mississippi, so this morning was laundry time, followed by a road trip to Walmart in Jerseyville for provisioning. The marina has a courtesy “car”, which is actually a 2001 Dodge 3500 eleven passenger van with over 212,000 miles on it. The shocks and suspension were shot so you had to be careful going around corners. But it got us there and back and is part of the whole looper experience – you never know what to expect!

As we walked from the dock to the parking lot I glanced up at the bluff across the road and realized these two houses sat on the top – what a view they must have!

We had dinner on the outside balcony at the restaurant that is at the marina tonight. There’s a car ferry that runs from the public boat ramp there across the rivers to St. Charles Co., MO. It apparently cuts 30 minutes off the trip, but only runs Fri-Sun.

We also watched several barges going by. We passed several as large as this one when we were on the Illinois River.

The first night in Grafton we ate at the marina restaurant and had their special bread pudding with bourbon sauce for dessert. It was so delicious that we had to have it again tonight. The presentation isn’t fancy, but it is so good we almost picked up the plate to lick it clean 😀

 

This was another day spent on the boat. Rich cleaned the outside of the boat and I wrote the last of the notes to friends to let them know what we’re doing. Not exciting, but necessary. It was a cool day so we weren’t even tempted to go to the pool. We watched several looper boats come in – it still amazes us how many boats are doing this.

We watched “Mystic Pizza” on TV in the late afternoon – fun movie, with Matt Damon making his movie debut. His appearance was so short that if you blinked you would have missed him.

We had dinner on the boat so we could see the season premiere of “The Big Bang Theory” We’re still trying to get used to central time – prime time beginning at 7 seems too early!

It was cloudy at sunset, so no sunset photo and no interesting events to photo. Some days are pretty boring as far as blogging goes. It seems like it’s exciting or boring, with nothing in between. I guess that’s how most of life is.

Today was spent doing things on the boat. Rich cleaned out bilges and found a bicycle pump that had been hiding for several days. He also climbed on top of the boat to get a more accurate measure of our air draft (how high the boat is above the water line). We thought we knew, but we held our breath every time we went under a low bridge on the river because it looked like we were going to hit a few times. Fortunately our air draft is what we thought it was, so in the future we’ll know if we need to request bridges to be raised in order to safely pass through.

I made a big breakfast for us, took care of some correspondence, paid some bills, and did as little as possible for most of the day. The big excitement was seeing an Asian carp jump several times behind our boat and watching a seaplane go upriver to take off.

While eating a late breakfast we heard what sounded like a cross between a small plane and a boat. Looking out this window we saw a seaplane going upriver and then take off. I couldn’t get to my phone quickly enough to get a photo, but just imagine seeing a small plane on the water out there – pretty amazing!

There was a big rainstorm over night which really cooled things down. We sat on the back deck around 6 with a drink, wearing jackets, and I had a blanket over my lap and legs like a little old lady (no comments from the younger ones out there about how I AM a little old lady – I don’t feel like one so therefore I am not one.)

Another beautiful sunset!

I didn’t realize how tired I was until I fell asleep at 9 last night and didn’t wake up until 7 this morning  – 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep! Even though we got to Grafton mid afternoon yesterday, it was still a long day – up at 6, on the river by 6:45, 88 miles of Illinois River. Here are some photos from yesterday.

Another big power plant along the river

The round stone chimney-looking structure near the river is an old corn cob burner. When farmers harvested their fields, they would bring the corn cobs here to be burned.

A barge being loaded – these structures are amazing!

Finally some small hills instead of flat land – and houses on stilts – hopefully the river won’t ever get up to the houses

These two photos of Kampsville IL are for my son who spent many summers here at the Center for American Archeology.

Besides the Center for American Archeology, Kampsville is also known for its car ferry. If there were no ferry to cross the river, it would take 2 1/2 hours to get to a bridge to get to towns on the other side of the river. The ferry runs back and forth constantly so you have to time it just right when you go past so you don’t interfere with it.

The lift bridge at Hardin IL has a lift span of 308 feet 9 inches, which is the largest span of this type in the world. This had not been on my bucket list, but maybe it should have been!

This is Mel’s Riverdock Restaurant in Hardin IL. There’s a sea wall/dock you can tie up to just to the right in this photo. We thought about stopping here but the dock is very exposed and my son said the food was just edible, so we decided to keep going.

We arrived at Grafton Harbor Marina about 2:15, got fuel and pumpout, and were finally settled into a slip about 3. The slip here is amazing – it’s covered! We decided to walk to the restrooms and check out the restaurant and realized we were hungry, so we had an early dinner at the Oyster Bar. The food is Cajun/Louisiana style and reminded us of Zydeco in Mooresville IN. We were sitting on the second floor balcony overlooking the slips when we realized two of the boats we had been traveling with for the past couple of days were pulling in. They had originally said they were going to stop at Mel’s, but decided it was a little too rustic for them. We finished dinner and walked down to say hi. While we were standing there, the fourth boat that had been traveling with us pulled in so the guys helped with their lines. Then it was back to the boat and lights out!

This is the view from the bow of our boat from our slip. The water on the other side of the dock is the Illinois River. The two bits of land are the ends of two islands. The water beyond the islands is the Mississippi River.

We decided to walk down the main street of Grafton this morning to see if we could find a place to get breakfast, but found nothing. Not much is open in the morning during the week here, just a sleepy little river town.

We did see a couple of interesting signs

Shortly before we got to Grafton, Rich spotted a bald eagle perched on a branch stuck in the river. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a photo of it before it flew off. In 1993 there was tremendous flooding on the river. Dan was at Kampsville at the time, did a lot of sandbagging, and when it became apparent that wasn’t going to keep out the waters, they sent him home. All up and down the river there are buildings like this one in Grafton that have high water marks on them from various floods.

This interesting little creature was on my bike tonight!

And now, finally, an explanation of tonight’s post title

We had planned to go to Alton tomorrow to get some electrical work done, but the place we wanted to use is booked for the next two weeks so there was really no reason to go there. We have a reservation for Saturday south of St. Louis, a one day trip from here, so I cancelled the Alton marina reservation and we’re staying in Grafton another three nights. There is always something to clean or check on a boat so we’ll have plenty of time to get caught up on everything.

 

 

Three days of being on the move from 6 a.m. wake up calls and 8-10 hours on the water have finally caught up with me. It’s not even 8:30 and I’m ready for bed. My iPad doesn’t have all the photos I took today and I can’t get airDrop to work with my phone, so I’m giving up and will write a nice long blog tomorrow. We’re in Grafton IL until Wednesday.

Our day started early once again – we pulled out of our slip at 6:40 a.m. and I got to see a pretty sunrise. We took the lead and the third boat in our trio sent me the photo of all three boats headed down river.

There was a bridge just a couple of miles from our starting spot. that we weren’t sure we could pass under without lowering our radar, so we asked to have it opened. It was a railroad bridge and the bridge tender said there was a train coming that was just a few minutes away, so we would have to wait until the train passed. The train did indeed cross the bridge a few minutes later but it was incredibly long. It turns out that this was just the beginning of waiting all day long.

There was a lock about 10 miles down river from our starting point which unfortunately was quite busy. We were able to tie up to the wall of a restaurant just above the lock and wait for word from the lockmaster that we could enter. A boat that had left Heritage Harbor a day before us was also waiting for the lock so they joined our trio. We finally got through the lock and we said good bye to the other 3 boats. We can travel about twice as fast as they can, so we wanted to move along and get to our next destination more quickly. The scenery through this part is rather monotonous and tends to make us want to take a nap – not a good idea when you’re driving a boat!

At least there were some interesting sights as we passed Peoria.

There are still plenty of industrial buildings along the river banks

And lots of barge traffic. We lost track of how many barges we passed today – and it seems we had to wait for most of them to maneuver around bends before we could get past them safely. It was a slow day – it took us 8 1/2 hours to go 81 miles.

We arrived at Logsdon Tug Service in Beardstown IL about 3:15 and tied up to a wall with 3 tugs in front of us and 2 barges behind us. There’s no power or water, just a safe place to spend the night, so we fired up the generator, turned on the A/C, used the water from our water tank to shower – we can be very self-sufficient when we need to be. We were talking to one of the guys who works on the tugs and asked about places to get food. He had just met us but he offered us the use of his Jeep if we didn’t want to walk – small town hospitality at its best! We decided to walk and found La Familia Taqueria just a few blocks away. We ordered way too much food, got 2 bolillos (a type of roll that’s great for sandwiches), and 2 paletas (a type of popsicle) for $27!

Tonight’s sunset – with another looper boat and two barges behind us

 

 

We began the day with Rich’s phone alarm playing “Good day sunshine” at 5:45 a.m. – never mind that the sun wouldn’t come up for another hour. We pulled out of the marina an hour later along with two other looper boats and headed south to Peoria. About 10 miles away was a lock, so one of the other boats had called before we left to see how much traffic there was. They were told that it would be busy all day so we should just come on down and the lockmaster would get us through whenever he could. When we were in sight of the lock we got a call from the lock that if we could get there in 5 minutes we could lock through immediately. Needless to say, we hit the throttle and got through in record time.

We were very close to the end of the lock!

Today we passed Peru – tomorrow we’ll pass Havana! We are world travelers and we didn’t have to leave Illinois.

We encountered a lot of fishermen today, many in small boats, but occasionally there would be a lot of them along the river bank. I’m not sure what kind of fish you find in the Illinois River, but I’m also not sure I would want to eat whatever you caught here.

This is what we mostly saw today – trees on both sides, not many houses, a few small towns.

Toward the right hand side of this photo on the little stream is an old dam built in the 1930s. The stream connected a small lake to the river. The locals claim that the wealthy people who lived on the lake didn’t like the river riff raff coming up to their  lake so they built a dam to keep them out.

An old lock no longer in use in Henry IL and a cool stone lighthouse about half a mile further on

Just like snowflakes, no two bridges look alike.

Along with fishermen, we also saw several large duck blinds.

We arrived at the Illinois Valley Yacht Club (IVY) about 3:15 and Rich very skillfully backed  us into our slip. As soon as we were secured the harbor master guided the next boat in our trio into the slip next to us – it was a tight fit!

Tomorrow we have another lock and an 80 mile day – all the way to Logsdon Tug Service in Beardstown.

 

Today was our last full day at this marina so we took the courtesy car to do errands. First on the list was laundry. When I win the lottery we’re going to have a bigger boat with crew to do the laundry and dishes and dock the boat (I even bought a lottery ticket today so it’s possible!)

After dropping a package off at the UPS store, grocery shopping, buying antifreeze, and putting gas in the car, we headed back to the marina to haul everything down to the boat and put it all away. Such excitement!

I’m not sure they could get any more advertising on the courtesy car! But it’s hard to criticize free transportation.

Tonight there were docktails up by the pool, with Loopers from 8 boats. There are at least 3 more boats here that didn’t make it to the party. Last night we heard there were 24 boats here a couple of weeks ago! Boats travel at different speeds, but  it seems that you will periodically see boats that you saw several days or weeks  back. Tonight there were two boats who had a happy reunion after not seeing each other for a few weeks – it was fun to see their reactions when they saw each other. There’s a real sense of community among Loopers.

Tomorrow we head out early for Peoria. We will be traveling at least part of the way with two other boats. It’s very common for boats to travel in packs on the rivers – it can make getting through locks easier.

Here’s tonight’s sunset

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When you’re in a marina for several days you find that some days can be rather ho hum kinds of days – and today was one of those. I spent the morning and early afternoon trying to figure out a potential itinerary for the next few days. Because of the length of our boat and the draft (the depth of the boat below the water) there are certain marinas we can’t get into. I’m also not thrilled about anchoring out on the river overnight. So trying to figure out where we can stop each day can be a bit challenging. I eventually figured out a place for both Saturday and Sunday and made reservations for both. The harbor master held a briefing this afternoon for Loopers and went into great detail about spots to anchor and suitable marinas from here to 50 miles south of St. Louis. If the weather holds I now have a good plan for getting us down to the Ohio River in about 10 days. I have a much better appreciation for what a struggle it must have been for people traveling in covered wagons and the length of time it took to get anywhere. We could have traveled by car from Holland MI to St. Louis in 8 hours. By boat it will take us almost 3 1/2 weeks!

Another beautiful sunset tonight

This morning was spent looking at weather reports and trying to decide when to head to Peoria and further stops. The winds are predicted at 13-16 mph for the next two days so we decided to stay put until Saturday. Our boat is over 18 feet tall with lots of surface area to get pushed around by the wind. That doesn’t make for a comfortable ride so we’ll stay here a couple more nights and hope the predicted 5 mph winds for Saturday hold. This journey isn’t about getting somewhere fast for us – if it were, we would be traveling by car!

The rest of the day was spent doing mundane things on the boat and chatting with other Loopers.

I did get a nice shot of some of the marina late this afternoon.

Thank you to all who have left comments on my blog. I’m glad you’re enjoying my blog. I’m still trying to figure out how to get pictures to appear properly oriented – my daughter informed me that some of them appear sideways or upside down when viewed on a PC or laptop. They look fine on my iPad – I guess everyone will need to get an iPad to read my blog (full disclosure – I own apple stock).😀 And then I’ll work on replies to comments.