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.