Starting down the rivers

We very happily left Lake Washing Machine (I mean Lake Michigan) and continued on our journey into Illinois.  We passed under 13 bridges on the Calumet River on our way to the first lock.  We need 18 feet 4 inches to get under a bridge without the bridge operator opening it up.  We approached one bridge that was listed at 18 feet 5 inches clearance and the bridge operator called us on the radio and said he didn’t have to open the bridge – that we would pass under no problem.  Needless to say, we were very apprehensive but we proceeded.  I kept out a careful eye and sure enough we made it with just inches to spare.  The lowest bridge height after that was 19 feet 7 inches so we were not too worried at all. Some of the bridges are not all that far apart.

We have seen a lot of tows and barges on the Illinois River as it is a commercial river.  Tows are like big tugs that push the barges (but don’t call them tugs – the tow captains do not like that).  The tows come in all sizes; the one below is what I would call about medium sized.

Asian carp are an invasive species that are on the Illinois River and are threatening the Great Lakes ecosystem.  To keep the Asian carp out of the Great Lakes there is an electric fish barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.

We were happy to see many other Looper boats on our arrival at Joliet.  We hadn’t seen too many Loopers in the last few weeks but now they are starting to gather on the rivers.  We met many of them including our first Canadian Loopers!

There were a total of 13 pleasure boats at Marseilles Lock. Once we were through the lock we immediately encountered a tow and barge.  We were the lead boat – here is what it looked like behind us as we all passed the tow.

We were delayed at one of the locks because a barge had run aground. The lock master had informed us of this and gave us the go ahead to proceed to the lock from the marina. It was an hour and a half cruise to the lock so we naturally assumed that we would get right into the lock – but it was another two hours of waiting after we arrived. Commercial vessels have priority at the locks. 

By the time we were able to enter the lock we were up to 21 boats.  We had to raft (tie) to each other – here we are second from the left.  This was one of the few places where we could buy charts – so this was a bit of an obstacle course for me as I had to go through each of the boats in order to get to the lock station to buy the charts. 

While the river is quite industrial in nature there are some scenic areas.

‘Carp cowboys’ are people who are trying to remove the carp from the rivers.  When the Asian carp jump out of the water they use their bows and arrows to get the fish.  It was amazing to watch the effectiveness of their method.  They keep the arrows on some sort of string so they can pull them back with the fish attached. While this picture doesn’t show any carp I can assure you that they were jumping like crazy – I just couldn’t capture it on my camera. 

Illinois has its own Ottawa so we paid a visit. No Parliament Buildings in this small town but it did have several historical landmarks. 

Jacques is very good at finding places that will deliver to the marinas. As we don’t have a car this is a necessity for big items like new batteries! We will stay in Peoria another day in order to replace the batteries and get some other maintenance done. We woke to a beautiful sunrise this morning and the moon last night was spectacular as well.