Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall

Days on cruise:  168

Distance traveled:  90.5 miles

Travel time:  7 hrs, 12 mins (8:30 counting lock)

Total trip odometer:  3,496 statute miles

Nothing about today went as planned, so this journey continues to be one that reinforces the need to remain flexible with “all plans cast in jello” to quote friend Hobie!

We got up early and intended to leave early, but the weather had other plans. It was raining, lightning, thundering and blowing, so we waited more than an hour for the weather to calm before casting off our lines and re-entering the Illinois Waterway.

We called the Peoria Lock to inquire about its’ status, and they told us they had two tow-barges waiting to lock through, and if we’d hurry up and get there, we could lock through with the second one. Great!  So we sped up (burned more fuel), and arrived at the lock only 45 minutes after departing (instead of 1.5 hours), only to find that plan wasn’t really going to happen.

Instead we pulled off to the right out of the way of the many maneuvering tows with barges, dropped our anchor next to another pleasure boat (meaning not a commercial vessel), a 75-foot Hatteras, and waited. The full-time professional captain of the Hatteras called us on the VHF radio, seemed bored with the wait, so engaged Cathryn in a 20-minute conversation. He’s been with this boat owner 16 years and made the trip up and down the rivers 16 times round trip.

Below: lock is on the right, a waiting tow on the left.

Eventually the lock staff called us into the lock and encouraged us to float free rather than tie to the wall as the drop was only 8 feet and they wanted it to go quickly so they could get back to locking through the commercial vessels. This was the first time we free-floated, and it went smoothly. That’s the 75-foot boat in front of us, also floating free while the water level drops.

We planned to make today’s journey about 50 miles, stopping at Tall Timbers Marina. However when we called the marina to ask how much water they had at the entrance and slips, they said they were already full for the weekend and couldn’t accommodate us. It wasn’t clear whether this was typical weekend busy-ness or because so many marinas don’t have enough water to accommodate boats our size anymore, so the few that have enough water are extra busy.  Anyway, that sent us into research mode to make a new plan for the day about where to stop.

We considered stopping to anchor at Quiver Island nearby, but when we checked the afternoon/evening weather forecast there, we learned a storm would be blowing through with high winds and thunderstorms, and being unfamiliar with the anchorage, we weren’t comfortable with that plan. The next place to stop and tie up for the night was another 40 miles further down the river. What to do???? We decided to pick up our pace and go for it.  So 2000 rpms and 15-18 mph instead of 1200 rmps and 9-10 mph we went!

Late in the afternoon we came upon a roadblock: a dredge had the entire channel blocked! We called on the radio, they inquired as to our draft (4 feet), and told us they’d send a little boat out to guide us outside the channel in waters that would be sufficiently deep for us. Ok. That’s interesting, but whatever you say is what we’ll do! And it worked out fine.

We’re starting to see lots of “flying fish”, presumably the famous Asian Carp about which we’ve heard so much. They seem disturbed by the noise or rough water of a passing vessel and often jump into the air, quite high and in large numbers, in our wake. We’re told we’ll be lucky if none ever jump onto our boat deck!

We saw white pelicans today, a first! We’re accustomed to the common brown pelicans of Florida, Mexico, the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and more.  But this was new.

Finally late in the day, we pulled into our overnight stop, Logston Tug Service. Believe it or not, we’re tied up to a BARGE for an overnight stay!  There are no amenities whatsoever – no water, electricity, restrooms, nothing – but it’s a secure place to stop where we don’t have to worry about dragging anchor in a storm, and there’s plenty of water depth.  So nothing to complain about, and Jeff, the guy who caught our lines and took our little bit of money was nice, friendly and helpful. The next marina was many miles down the river, so this was a happy choice.

This was our third longest day of travel on the entire Loop so far, and we’re happy to have it behind us.

Good thing we didn’t need to get off the boat to go somewhere, as there’s lots of stuff to thread your way through or trip over between us and the shore!

A “One Lock, Two Barges” Day

Days on cruise:  167

Distance traveled:  60.6 miles

Travel time:  5 hrs, 52 mins (9:33 counting lock time)

Total Trip Odometer:   3,406 statute miles

After a quiet night on the Ottawa Town Wall, we thought we’d do something smart and get an early start, hoping to get through the only lock of the day before a crowd of tows and barges held us up. Great idea, maybe, but it sure didn’t work!

We called ahead to Starved Rock Lock after we were underway at 7:15 and were told they were separating a string of barges into two sections to go through, so it would be awhile.

We tied up to one of the cells to wait (the round things you see in the above photo, on the left; tugs pushing barges use these like bumper cars to align their barge load with the gates into the lock). An hour later five other Looper boats appeared, as well as a second tow with 6 more barges. Groan! Commercial vessels always have priority over us “rec boats” (recreational vessels), so this didn’t bode well.

It looked like a party on the cell with us and one other boat rafted on one side, and 4 Looper boats rafted together on the other side while we all waited and compared notes.

After the first tow and barges finished going through, they began loading the second tow and barges. Finally the lockmaster called to say if all six of us wanted to enter the lock and tie on to the barge, not the lock wall, we could go through with him. Interesting! So that’s what we did, and it was smooth and easy.

Four hours after arriving at Starved Rock Lock, we finally emerged and got underway again. Whew! Quite the parade with six Looper boats leaving at once. We each quickly came up to our respective cruising speeds, sorted ourselves out and moved along.

Starved Rock State Park is immediately adjacent to the lock and is so-named because in the late 1800s three Native American tribes were feuding when one tribe fled to the top of the rock, the other two besieged the rock and waited until those on top starved to death. Nasty story for a pretty place.

So we continued on down the Illinois River 50 more miles, and finally 9.5 hours later pulled into Hamm’s Holiday Harbor.

This place is run by a guy named Hamm who doesn’t accept credit cards, only cash or checks. As you see in the photo above he also seems to collect river boats of various types.  Maybe we’ll hear the story of these crafts before we leave.

We topped off our fuel tank as his price, at $4.39, is better than anywhere else for quite a while. And we know other Loopers who bought fuel here in the past week, so we aren’t too worried that it’s old fuel gone bad.

Glad to be settled in at the end of a long day.

There are a number of marinas in this stretch that only have 3 or 4 feet of water at their entrances, so we stayed here, where Mr. Hamm uses a tow boat with 6 foot props to “dredge” his channel. We’d like to travel this stretch on the Illinois, Mississippi and Ohio Rivers as quickly as possible, as the water levels continue to drop, and marinas and anchorages fall off the list of useable places to spend the night. So we plan another long day tomorrow unless we have a weather “hold”. The current forecast is for 90% chance of rain and lots of thunderstorms, but we’ll see what it says in the morning.

Our First Full Day As “River Rats”

Days on cruise:  166
Distance traveled:  34.1 miles
Travel Time:  4 hrs, 12 mins (6:36 including locks)
Total trip odometer:  3,345 statute miles
An addendum to yesterday’s post: After the kids left, Cathryn went ashore to get rid of garbage, so met the owner of the marina, another Bob.  After chatting a bit, Bob said he was going into town to meet his girlfriend for dinner, and if we wanted to drop him off at the restaurant, we could keep his van for the rest of the evening to run some errands. Wow! We keep meeting the nicest folks who do stuff like this, knowing they’ll never see us again and there’s nothing in it for them. But Bob and Harborside Marina 14 miles south of Joliet sure earned this mention! We stocked up on groceries as well as went to Wal-Mart in search of some camera stuff (no luck).
At midnight we woke to some serious rocking and rolling on the water. Bob went to investigate, and it turned out we were experiencing a squall. The lightning and thunder were continuous, the rain was pounding, and the wind was blowing so hard we hoped the skimpy posts (no cleats) to which our boat was tied would hold. Bob sat on the flybridge for 30 minutes til it subsided, but it sort of ruined his sleep for the night.
This morning the weather remained windy and nasty, so we stayed at the dock an hour longer than planned to see if things would calm down. When they did, we called the Dresden Lock a mile down river and learned there would be no wait to enter and get locked down. Hurray!

The scenery improved with few industrial facilities and lots of trees, above.
Many of the bridges all along the Loop have “air clearance gauges” you can check in advance with your binoculars to see how high the bridge is at the current water level. This tells you whether you can safely make it under, or whether you need to call a bridge tender to open it, if it’s that type of bridge. As you see on this gauge, the current clearance under the bridge is more than 50 feet, but apparently at times, probably during Spring flood season, there can be 20 feet or less! We were amazed to see all the buildings and facilities which would be under water if it gets that high.

While it’s a little intimidating to see these behemoth tows pushing multi-wide barges toward you, there are clear protocols for communicating with and passing them which make it safe. We have AIS (Automatic Identification System) installed on our electronics, and Bob set the sensitivity at a 2-mile distance. When the AIS detects a tow within that range, it makes an audible sound on the chartplotter and also shows the location and name of the approaching vessel, as well as how many minutes or seconds until we collide if we don’t take steps to pass safely. It even shows boats that are around a bend in the river that can't yet be seen. So we call the tow, by name, on our VHF radio, tell them our location and how far we are from them, and ask them whether they want us to pass on their port or starboard side. The biggest vessel always gets to decide!
We’re amused to learn they respond in more friendly fashion to Cathryn’s voice than Bob’s, but in any case, they’re always appreciative and give us clear direction in tow lingo. “On the one” or “one whistle” means we stay to the right side of the channel leaving them to our port; “two whistles” means we go to the left side of the channel and leave them to our starboard side. We’ve heard them chastise boaters who don’t know what this means, so it’s worth learning!

The tugs have a HUGE prop wash that leaves strong currents and whirling eddies in their wake for about 1,000 feet, so we steer carefully after passing them.
This summer’s drought devastated the Midwest agricultural scene. The fringe of trees along the river shoreline is backed by mile after mile of dead corn fields, the result of no rain.

This afternoon we spent two hours sitting idle above the Marseilles Lock while a large tug with 4-by-2  barges entered the lock ahead of us, split the barges in order to fit them all in at once, then maneuvered them to both walls, locked through, then reconnected the barges to proceed. It must be  a tedious process for the tow captains!

So far all of the locks we’ve encountered south of Chicago have both floating bollards (below) as well as ropes hanging down from the wall. We much prefer the bollards. With these, we position the boat against the wall so the middle of the boat is adjacent to the bollard, throw one line around the top of the bollard, and as the water level drops, so does the bollard inside the recessed channel. We don’t have to adjust our lines to make them longer as we would if we were hanging onto lines at the top of the lock wall. Simple! We have, however, been warned by one lockmaster to always keep a knife close at hand in case the bollard gets stuck and stops floating down. If that happens, we’re to rapidly cut our line off and float on the water without any attachment to the wall.  Yikes!  Hope that never happens.

This huge old tug has been turned into a riverside café.

Five miles before the Marseilles Lock we passed a canoe on the river, the first we’ve seen. As already described above, we had to wait two hours before we could enter the lock. During that time, this canoe caught up with us!

He pulled into the lock right behind us and we had the chance to talk with him for 20 minutes while the water dropped. It turns out he’s also doing the Great Loop!!! Incredibly, he began his Loop in Grafton, Illinois only three weeks (at his speed) south of here last October 2011 and will finish soon. Bill told us he averages 25 miles per day, budgeted no money for fuel (of course) or lodging, camps on the shore most nights but occasionally gets invitations to stay in someone’s home, and has only a cell phone and camp stove with propane canisters on board, no VHF radio or other amenities.

Bill also described being denied permission to transit the Electric Fish Barrier (see post two days ago), so had to CARRY, by himself, his canoe and belongings along the shoreline to bypass the 1/4 mile electrified segment. Amazing!!! His biceps show what he’s been doing the past 11 months.  He’s a cheerful, interesting guy. Makes us feel like wimps for thinking we’re living in small quarters!
At the end of the day we tied up on the Ottawa town wall, yet another free wall with electricity, but no water. We’re happy to be able to run the air conditioner as it was close to 90, both temperature and humidity, again today.

Joliet Caravan, and the “kids” go home

Days on cruise:  165

Distance traveled:  13.8 miles

Travel time:  1 hr, 49 minutes

Total trip odometer:  3,311 statute miles

After a quiet night on the Joliet Town Wall, five of the seven Loop boats headed south together so we could all make the same bridge opening and go through the lock just around the corner together. Rickshaw, Last Resort, Toucan and Paddy Wagon all planned to go further down the river today, so we took up the rear.

It was quite the parade for the mile-long journey. All five boats were in the 42-50 foot range with sundeck models.

Quite an assortment of boats lined the travel path.

Blue Heron and White Heron were seemingly everywhere!

Click on the photo below to read this hilarious sign! We haven’t yet had the pleasure of this experience, but understand it’s inevitable that we will: flying carp!

Back in May when we had daughter and son-in-law Mackenzie and Matt on board for a week, Cathryn’s father made a joke about our letting them be slackers who only worked on their laptops while aboard (doing their day jobs)instead of making them swab decks and clean the heads. So when Justin offered to wash down the boat on our arrival at Harborside Marina, Bob took him up on the offer and Adrienne joined in. What a treat for Bob, as it was 90+ outside, both temperature and humidity!

At 3:30 Connie (a local informal taxi lady) arrived to transport Adrienne and Justin to O’Hare to catch their flight back home to Denver. We said our good-byes and were sad to see our easy-going, helpful, cheerful guests leave. So on down the rivers we go!

Chicago to Joliet

Days on cruise:  164

Distance traveled:  41.8 miles

Travel time:  5 hrs, 15 minutes

Total trip odometer:  3,297 statute miles

Late Sunday afternoon Cathryn, Adrienne, Justin, and Justin’s father Jeff took off to see the view from the top of the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower), while Bob and Denise (Justin’s mother) went to the park to listen to live music at JazzFest. 

Bob and Denise had more fun, because the rest of the group had to stand in five different lines for two hours total time before arriving at the top of the Willis Tower. But the view was sure worth it once we got up there!

 

Monday morning, Labor Day, with all six of us on board, we left DuSable Marina, traveled the last 1/2 mile on Lake Michigan, and entered the Chicago Lock which dropped us a whopping two feet to the level of the Chicago River. And then had the spectacular experience of traveling right through downtown Chicago, looking up at all the skyscrapers, from our own boat. What a thrill!

The lowest fixed bridge is officially 17 feet, but we cleared them by well more than a foot, presumably because the water levels are low this year.

We were so early there was almost no other boat traffic on the river.

The photo below shows the top of our boat, the bimini, and the bottom of the bridge under which we passed. What’s to worry about? Good thing Bob took down the davit and radar dome or we’d have been in trouble!

Four miles downriver we pulled over at a park dock and said  goodbye to Jeff and Denise who had to drive back home to Ohio to return to work Tuesday. We’re so glad to have met them in advance of next year’s wedding between their son and our daughter, and really enjoyed their visit.

The next 35 miles took us through territory that was largely industrial land and not very scenic except for the many birds. We only passed two moving tows pushing barges on this stretch, so we felt fortunate. But that gave us a little practice calling the tows on the VHF radio, telling them where we were, and asking whether they wanted us to pass “on the one whistle or the two whistles”, tow lingo for a port-to-port or starboard-to-starboard pass. It’s always their call!

At one point a tow with barges was maneuvering in the river, blocking the entire channel, so we waited about 15 minutes while he got settled along the shore.

Next up was the Electric Fish Barrier, sometimes called the Asian Carp Barrier. This 300-yard segment of the river has been electrified for the purpose of preventing the invasive species of carp from traveling upriver and infesting the Great Lakes.  Boaters are required to call on the VHF to announce their entry and departure from the electrified area (only one boat is supposed to be in there at a time), wear life vests, and understand that if anyone falls overboard the Coast Guard will not initiate a rescue until the person has floated downstream and out of the electrified stretch.

Adrienne was amused to see her parents simultaneously deciphering an upcoming stretch of river with binoculars.

The travel day ended when we pulled into the town of Joliet and tied up to the free town wall which fortunately has electricity, as it was in the 90s, both temperature and humidity. There were six other Looper boats at the wall, and we chose to spend our last night with Adrienne and Justin on our boat, rather than joining what looked like a lively Looper gathering for docktails. 

This place was much quieter and more comfortable than we’d been led to expect, and we felt entirely safe here.

Chicago: Days 3 and 4

Days on cruise:  163

Our daughter Adrienne and her fiancée Justin have long been scheduled to fly from Denver where they live to meet us in Chicago Friday night. Justin’s parents live in Ohio, a 6-hour drive from Chicago, and drove up Friday to see the kids and meet us for the first time.

Jeff and Denise arrived Friday afternoon, so we had time for a great getting-t0-know-you visit and dinner on our sundeck before Bob and Jeff headed to their respective staterooms on the boat to go to bed, and Denise and Cathryn left for O’Hare at 10pm to pick up Adrienne and Justin.

It’s wonderful to have them all here with us, though we’re not sure Adrienne and Justin got much sleep on their less-comfortable-than-a-bed accommodations on the dinette made into a bed. Ah youth, they survived! And the next day Jeff and Denise moved to a hotel for the last two nights, so  the kids moved into the bunk room.

The weather stayed hot and muggy, and unfortunately so cloudy that the photos aren’t as great. Bob lost a bunch of photos he took over the last two days due to an SD card failure, so about half the ones below are Adrienne’s.

We spent Saturday afternoon at the Field Museum of Natural History.

“Sue” is the largest complete Tyrannosaurus skeleton in the world, and at 42 feet is the same size as Next To Me.

Looking up from the downtown streets.

Bob and Adrienne are reflected in The Cloud Gate, AKA “The Bean” as they take pix, having gone on an early morning walk there to beat the crowds.

We spent Sunday afternoon at the Shedd Aquarium, a fabulous place with an astonishing “Jellies” exhibit.

Adrienne and Justin at the aquarium.

Millennium Park has an amusing water feature and fountain which shows faces that spit water out of their mouths! Adrienne enjoyed running through the water with the rest of the kids.