The Illinois, Mississippi, Ohio and Cumberland Rivers

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.

Mississippi River on the left - Illinois River on the right

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.

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.

Approaching Saint Louis

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.

Largest barge we saw - 30 empties (5 wide x 6 long)

Passing "Sierra Dawn"

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?).

Pelican flock on the Illinois

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).

Bug tied to tow service barge near Peoria

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.

Fern giving nightly briefing and chain-smoking at the gas dock

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.

Your basic wing dam

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.

Chicago To Ottawa, IL

After having traveled down all 300 miles of Lake Michigan, which by-the-way, contains 1.3 quadrillion gallons (1,299,000,000,000,000) of water, we arrived at DuSable Harbor in downtown Chicago.

Approaching Chicago

Fly Hunting While Approaching Chicago

View from boat

Beautiful night view from marina

Our friends, The Elwart's, along with other friends, Jane and Karina Kedo and Tim Wallace, picked us up and took us to dinner and a hilarious show at "Second City" (it's like Saturday Night Live, in fact many of the famous SNL players - Chevy Chase, Gilda Radnor, John Balushi, and many, many more, are alums of Second City).

Before The Show

The next day, we took a 90-minute architectural tour via boat all through downtown on the Chicago River.  We saw and learned about Art Deco, Post Modern, Organic and Repurposed buildings and of course, the Willis, a .k.a. Sears Tower and the Trump Tower, both of which we could see right from our slip in the marina. We also learned that Chicago is called the "Second City," not because it is second to New York City, but because it replaced itself after the great fire of 1871 that destroyed most  of the city. We also learned that it's called The  "Windy City," not because there's a lot of wind here, but because Chicago politicians were so full of hot air. It was fascinating tour and made our own trip on the same route a few days later, much more interesting.

Downtown Buildings

Chicago Merchandise Mart

That same evening, the Elwart's again picked us up and off we went for our bi-annual dinner at, "Fogo De Chao." It's a Brazilian Steakhouse and a carnivore's dream. They give you a round disc that is green on one side and red on the other. When you want more meat, you have your disc green-side up. When you want to take a break, you flip it to red. During your dinner, there are guys constantly roaming the room with large knives and long double skewers of all kinds of meat (and a few selections of chicken and sausages). When they see a green disc, they ask you if you'd like whatever meat they have, and if you say yes, they carve off a piece and your job is to grab it with the little ice tongs that are part of your place setting. The are several of these restaurants in the US - Boston, Philadelphia, Orlando, Atlanta, Baltimore, Denver, Miami Beach, etc. They are great fun and we highly recommend a visit - but go VERY hungry and don't pig out on the fabulous salad bar (that's what they want you to do so you don't eat as much meat!).

Check Out His Knife!

While in Chicago, we didn't go to the top of the Willis (a.k.a. Sears) Tower, the museums or the famous Bean, because we'd been to them on previous trips to Chicago. That left us time to socialize with fellow Loopers,  "Off Leash," "What's Next? and "Second Wind." It also left us time to wash off the zillions of Shad Flies that had decided that "HUMBUG" was a good place to die.

Hiromi, Mike and Sidney from "Off  Leash"

 




We left the city by entering the Chicago Lock on a foggy morning and it took us about an hour to transit the downtown area on the Chicago River.

Chicago Lock On A Foggy Morning

Low Bridges In Chicago

Just Making It Under A Bridge

Nancy & Dave Gorzka Joined Us From Chicago to Joiliet

Almost immediately after leaving downtown Chicago, the scenery becomes very industrial and we began to encounter large strings of barges. At one point, we were forced to thread our way through a gauntlet of two gigantic tows. Each tow was two barges wide by three long which left only 25 feet
between them for our 13 foot-beamed boat to pass through.

In The Gauntlet

Traffic Jam (Big Things Are Barges)

After a while, we caught up with our new Canadian friends, Debra and Rick Chabot, whom we had met in Chicago. We followed them on their Mainship 40, "What's Next?" to Joliet. That night, we tied stern-to-stern with them on the town wall and the next day, traveled with them past some cement and chemical plants and later, beautiful, rolling farmlands and corn fields, to Ottawa, IL.

Ottawa was the site of the Lincoln-Douglas debate in 1858. It was also where Wild Bill Hickok grew up.

Deb & Rick On "What"s Next?" Watching Barge Pass

Making Time On The Illinois River

Farm & Cornfields Along Illinois River

Such A Lovely Couple

HUMBUG will wait for us in Ottawa for two weeks while we drive home for Pete's nephew's wedding in Boston, drop off about a hundred pounds of charts and Waterway Guides and pick up another hundred pounds, and sleep in our house for the first time in over three months. We've traveled over 1,700 miles, burned more than 800 gallons of diesel and every second has been a blast.

The East Coast of Lake Michigan

Mackinac Bridge

On August 3, we began our month-long journey down the east side of Lake Michigan by passing under the Mackinac bridge which spans The Straits of Mackinac (connecting Lake Huron and Lake Michigan).

Deep Lake

The lake is truly a fresh water ocean. You can  not see the opposite coast, it's extremely deep in many places and it looks just like it does when we are out in the Atlantic. The east coast, in particular, looks like you are cruising along the Rhode Island and Massachusetts shorelines because the whole shore is lined with white, sandy beaches and dunes.

Beautiful Beaches and Sand Dunes

We chose to travel down the east coast of the lake rather than the west coast, because the east coast has harbors of refuge about every twenty miles.Most of these harbors are in-land lakes that have been connected to the large lake by man. In these harbors, are beautiful, old beach resort towns each with its own unique personality. Harbor Springs looked a lot like Edgartown - lots of large, white, old-money summer homes; Petoskey looked like Oak Bluffs - tiny, brightly painted, gingerbread houses close together each with a  charming name; Charlelevoix had cool, quirky "mushroom" houses; Leland had an historic section of old fisherman shanties; Pentwater was having it's home coming weekend complete with parade, fireworks and fireman's breakfast; Grand Haven provided us with front row seats on our upper deck, to their nightly, 20-minute musical water fountain show; Saugatuck was diverse, artistic and fun with an 1837, hand-operated chain ferry, and wild dune buggy rides; and South Haven had incredible sunsets.

Mushroom house

Mushroom house

Me in Fishtown

Peaceful Manistee

A lot of these towns are connected by wonderful, paved bike trails, so we rode our bikes a lot this past month, sometimes 20 miles or more a day.  We were lucky to have our friends, Jan and Ralph Elwart, who live on the other side of the lake in Lake Forrest, IL, join us in Grand Haven and cruise with us for a week  to South Port. Other friends, Nancy and Dave Gorzka, sailed all n ight long from Kenosha, WI to join us and the Elwarts for a long weekend in Saugatauck where we enjoyed a lovely evening at the Clearbrook Country Cllub with the Gorzka's local friends, Kathy and Bob Kubasiak, who transported us to the club in their snazzy, red,1964 Ford Fairlane convertible, top down.

Cake I Made For Ralph's Birthday

Gorzkas & Elwarts

Elwarts & Us

Frankfort light

Couple of Beers in the dunes

Dune buggy ride was JUST like riding a roller coaster - WILD

Dune Buggy Trails

Lake Michigan Sunset

While in Saugatuck, we were stern-to in our slip, right in front of a gazebo in a lovely little park.  One afternoon, while were were lounging on our upper deck, much activity started happening at the gazebo. Turned out, a wedding was happening thirty feet off our stern, effectively making us "wedding crashers." When they print their wedding photos, they'll see us sitting in deck chairs, wearing t-shirts and the word, "HUMBUG" in 8-inch red letters. I'm sure Photoshop will be employed!

Angelina's and Susan's Wedding