Day 87: End of the Illinois River

The crew working really really hard while Rayma drives.

A very long series of barges and a tug went by during our dinner upstairs on the deck at Grafton Harbor Marina. A little video of it passing is below.

View of a railroad bridge that we had to go under.

Right: These video are of the Le Grange lock that is located between Havana, IL and Grafton, IL.

August 26, 2029: This was (planned) to be a 120 mile day and so it was; however, we got lucky. First, we were lucky that there was only one (1) lock along this particular stretch. Second, at that one lock, they were doing maintenance and while we were waiting to go into the lock the maintenance crew advised it was ready to do a poriton of the work that would require the lock be closed for two hours - but the lockmaster had us go through before that shut down. Third, there was almost no other traffic on the Illinois River so we were able to cruise down at 16-18 knots the entire time. We left Havana (IL) at 7:30 am and we pulled into the Grafton Harbor Marina at 2:15 pm.

Above, this is fairly typical scenery from today’s cruising. Initially there was more industrial activities along the river but that petered out. Mostly we saw bushes, trees and the occasional glance of corn fields.