The clear sky continued through the night and dropped the the air temp to a chilly at 53 degrees in the morning. Air warmed by the bright sun to the mid 70s. It was very breezy at times. Good time to be off the lake. Another nice weather day
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We had another good and not so good day and long again - 78 miles starting at 7:00 and stopping at 6:00. That wasn't the plan. We planned to anchor. So let's recount the day.
The day was bright to start - but look at the smoke on the water from the 53 degree air temperature.
Glad we are off the Lake. Others are many miles behind - it is changing. Even the birds know as we saw flocks of many different kinds of birds - it was really wonderful to see them. I have some photos below.
We were lucky at Starved Rock Lock a short time after leaving. We called about four miles out and was told that we could be there in 20 minutes we could lock down with a tow boat (no barges) - "we will be there" and we slid right into the lock and down.
If you look at a map you will see that we have traveled more west than south since leaving Chicago. The compass shows the heading of about 270 degrees - west.
This is the turn that we start moving southerly - see compass is close to 180 degrees. Seemed kind of interesting.
We passed under the Abraham Lincoln Memorial bridge. We thought we needed a photo. don't you?
Still a fair number of barges in places. This is Peru
A short distance from Peru we came to a new bridge over the river and a lot of construction barges and cranes. As it turns out the old bridge had been closed the day before to allow the old bridge to be blown up and dropped into the river!. Who knew?
But they had cleared most of the main channel. A work boat came up to us and said it was closed but as the divers were not in the river at the time he would escort us though - but we couldn't tell the myriad of tows stuck in the banks waiting for the river to open -which I did hear chattering about it on the Radio
I will admit to dumb luck for not being stuck there for a long time. See the actual bridge demolition by clicking the link below.
Spring Valley Bridge Demo
And we saw a lot of different birds including this white stork type - not sure what exactly.
These were white geese! Must be American as they don't look Canadian.
These are the white black tipped pelicans we saw on Lake Michigan. So cool to see so many.
And this is lower part of the Illinois approaching Peoria. It is very frustrating to see this great expanse of water and realize that it is just a foot or two deep out of the channel.
In fact that is what made the bad part of today's trip. We tried to anchor is several places that the guides said was OK to find it shallow, In fact one time I got stuck and thought we were there for a long while - but I was able to back out with much effort. But it clogged the intakes again and we had more engine overheating - so we limped to the marina we were going to get to tomorrow - but we did and are secure.
So we are tired and going to bed so....
Good Night and May God Bless
Sorry about your plugging water intakes. At least you know how to resolve that easily enough. Good luck with the rest of the journey down the rivers.
ReplyDeleteDuane and Diane
m/v Diva Di
Hello to Duane and Diane
DeleteThe sympathy from a fellow boater for things that happen on the water is appreciated. We seem to have the engines back to getting enough cooling water - after plugging the intakes the second time with mud this time as noted above.
The river is beautiful in a large part of the way - we are looking forward to more of the river trip.
Safe travels to you both. Glad you seem to have had a nice trip to Maine.