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| Early morning mist on Illinois River |
Well, we made it to Grand Rivers, Kentucky.
To get here, we covered 553 miles, during which we cruised two long legs of the trip down the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers and, two short legs, up the Ohio and Cumberland Rivers.
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| Mississippi River on the left - Illinois River on the right |
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| Sandstone cliffs on Mississippi |
It took us nine LONG days to get here from Ottawa, Illinois where we had left HUMBUG to drive home to Pete's nephews wedding in Boston.
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| Two happy couples at the wedding |
With the exception of a few small towns and the City of Saint Louis, what you see on these rivers, is a wide expanse of water bordered on both sides by trees that are on top of levees. The levees protect the towns and houses that we can't see.
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| Approaching Saint Louis |
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| HUMBUG does the arch |
Punctuating this pretty boring scenery, are gigantic strings of barges, tied together and pushed by huge tugs. When we see an "AIS" signal on our chart plotter, it's usually one of these behemoths. We always call them by name on our VHF radio, to ask politely, on which side they would like us to pass. Sometimes they tell us to pass on the 1 (pass with them on our port side) or on the 2 (pass with them on our starboard side). But also, they sometimes they tell us to just find some little pocket and get out of their way. Usually, we have to ask them to repeat themselves several times, because they have their own secret, heavily Southern-accented, language. But some how, we have understood them and survived.
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| Largest barge we saw - 30 empties (5 wide x 6 long) |
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| Passing "Sierra Dawn" |
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| Big old red guy |
About the only other things you see, are birds - lots and lots of Great Blue Herons (I'm not worried that they will soon be extinct) and surprisingly, on the Illinois River, great flocks of White Pelicans (who knew?).
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| Pelican flock on the Illinois |
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| Sometimes you see interesting things like this abandoned casino barge |
There are very few marinas on these rivers, so we spent some nights in unusual places. One night, we tied to a working barge at a tow service company near Peoria ($1.00 per foot with no services).
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| Bug tied to tow service barge near Peoria |
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| Bug at Hoppies |
Another night, we stayed at Hoppies, a funky marina-like place that's actually three old barges tied together. At Hoppies, feisty, 80 + year old Fern, rules the roost and gives salty briefings every night on the river conditions and what to expect after leaving her place.
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| Fern giving nightly briefing and chain-smoking at the gas dock |
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| Loopers waiting for Fern at Hoppies |
When there were no barges to tie up to, we stayed behind wing dams or tow heads. A wind dam is a jetty of rocks, designed to direct the flow of the river toward the center. A tow head is point of land that has been cut off by the river, creating a channel, thus tuning it into an island.
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| Your basic wing dam |
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| Fellow Looper "Carol Anne" anchored next to us at a wing dam |
Sometimes we spent from 7:00 am to 6:00 pm on the water because we had to get to a barge, wing dam or tow head - someplace safe - so we'd be out of the channel and the barges that run all night long.
Now, we're glad to be off the big rivers and in a wonderful place called, "Green Turtle Bay Marina and Resort," for a WHOLE week. There are loaner cars, 3 pools, street-legal golf carts, two restaurants and a spa here - yea! There are also 15 Looper boats here, so there are lots of "docktail" parties. We've been seeing more and more of "our kind" lately, as we all head for Alabama and the fall AGLCA (America's Great Loop Cruisers' Association) rendevous in October.
