Day 166- A Bar of a different kind

Wednesday September 1, 2021.
Temp: 80/66, Humidity: 54/97%, Top Wind: NE8 mph, Precip: none- sunny all day 🌞😎, Miles Traveled: 83, Number of Locks: 1, down about 8’

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YAY! No fog this morning! The forecast had today looking fabuous for a cruise down the river. I was thinking that the only thing that could ruin that would be fog. But hey – it didn’t come! 😊. We have a long 85-ish mile day ahead of us, with one lock just ten miles downstream. I got up at 6:00 and checked the lock queue, and there was nobody there. SWEET! Alrighty then – let’s get rolling! We were untied, unplugged, and backing oh so carefully out of our slip by about 6:45. We churned up some mud as Captain backed us out and pivoted us 180 degrees to tiptoe out of the marina. The depth alarm kept going off, but we didn’t clunk anything- just stirred up a bunch of silt. It was a really pretty sunrise, promising a really nice day.

There was just a ripple on the water with a breeze from the north. That meant we weren’t going to have much breeze as we traveled south. Thank goodness it wasn’t supposed to get much above 80 degrees today…. at least that was part of the plan for staying at IVY as long as we did. We wanted to wait for a bit cooler weather. Tonight is supposed to drop below 60, so that will be more comfortable than 75 degrees at night with no A/C!

The morning light made the river going into Peoria really pretty.

I don’t know what these old structures were. They looked like they belonged to a fort or something!

This is downtown Peoria. There is a free dock here, but there were mixed reveiws about whether the power worked or not. It is supposed to be a day-use dock only, but some reviews said that boats do stay the night. The bartender at the Yacht Club said that you should keep your Glok handy if you spend the night here. That’s too bad – it could be a nice place if the city patroled it.

This was just a picture of one of the MANY Caterpillar buildings. Apparently Cat (as in the heavy equipment kind) is synonymous with the town of Peoria.

I don’t have any idea what this was along the river, but it was huge. This is just a piece of the facility. There were several brick buildings amongst the manufacturing structures.

We saw DOZENS of bald eagles today! I couldn’t capture them well with my phone, and my real camera’s batteries were deader than a doornail.

After about an hour, we were approaching the Peoria Lock. Kenny called on the radio, and we discovered that there was NOBODY else in the queue, so they would get the gates open for us right away. YAHOO! I like it when there is no delay, especially when we’re looking at an 85 mile day! The lockmaster told us it would be about an eight foot drop, so we could float, or we could take a line. There was a bit of a breeze blowing up our butt, so we opted to take one line, and Captain stayed upstairs at the helm to keep us straight. It worked out great.

Within 20 minutes, we were out the other side and on our way south! YEEHAW!

As we were tootling along at a bit under our normal rpm speed, we were going over 10mph. Nice. There is enough current to give us about a 1mph push in our favor. At one point, I smelled something nasty, like a rotting animal. We looked all around and could not see anything in the water or on the banks. It was bad. And then, I smelled hot metal. Like welding hot. Captain checked all the guages, and everything looked ok. I ran downstairs, and it smelled fine inside. I opened the engine room, and it smelled fine in there. Whew! It wasn’t us! So then I checked the Google. AH – OK. It’s the Cat Foundry. Yep – that would smell like melting metal.

This isn’t anything special, other than it shows where the normal waterline should be. Like maybe 8 feet higher? Which reminded me – when we came through here in 2018, the lock in Peoria was wide open, which they do when the water levels are higher than they are now. With low water, they need to dam it back to hold and maintain water in the pool between the locks.

Here are some more eagles. We decided this must be EAGLE ALLEY.

It was a nice cruise, with varying scenery.

Around 11:00 I gave the sleepy Captain a break and I took the helm for about an hour and he took a lil snooze.

We had just a few tows to maneuver around today. This one wan’t too big, going south, and it didn’t take us very long to get around him. Sometimes when they’re going the same direction, it takes forever to get around.

We saw this big guy coming up at us, so Captain called him on the radio to verify which side he’d like us to pass on. You can’t just assume that normal U.S. driving on the right is the best choice.

In this case, it was, because the tow was headed for the bank on our port side. He was pulling over his fifteen barges because there was a wide barge coming down river behind us.

This was just some strange old tower. 🤷‍♀️

I thought this railroad lift bridge looked kind of funny with the big knobs on top.

YAY! We arrived at BAR ISLAND! We anchored in this spot in 2018 and it’s a good spot. The water is deep enough but not too deep outside of the river channel, and barges can easily see you. Bar Island is tiny and doesn’t really provide any protection, but it does offer a segregation from the river channel where the barges run. There were four other looper boats already here, so we pulled in behind them and dropped our Vulcan anchor and about 80’ of chain in 11’ of water. The anchor grabbed beautifully, and the current of the river kept us completely straight. Perfect!

It was still about 80 degrees out, and our stern was facing west in this crook of the river. I put up some fancy shade providers, and we set up our chairs outside to catch some breeze flowing through. We opened all the windows inside and the hatch on the bow to try to get some air flow through the boat.

Ahhh! It was a really nice setting, with very few bugs. We had a few flies come visit, but no infestations.

The grill and propane came out for some steaks, and we fired up the genny to run the a/c to cool the interior of the boat down for a little while during dinner. The engines just radiate so much heat up through the floor that it is hard to get the interior temperature down. We saw this tow chugging uphill. They really churn up the water and create some rapids behind them when they’re going up stream.

So here is where we are…. at a Bar of a different kind.

The LaGrange lock is just five miles downstream from here, so about a half hour. I texted the other boats that are here to see what their plans were for morning. I didn’t get replies, so we’ll just skeedaddle at sunrise, and hope that the lock doesn’t want to wait. It’s only about a five foot drop, so not a huge reset if we don’t all go through together. Then we’ll have another 80 miles to go after we get through the lock. Tomorrow we will finish the Illinois river, as we are going to Grafton, which is at the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi.