Sunday September 5, 2021.
Temp: 76/71, Humidity: 69/90%, Top Wind: SW9 mph, Precip: sunny again! , Miles Traveled: none
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The ConTrios yacht club from Grafton comes here every year for their end of summer/Labor Day extravaganza. They have organized meals, live music, a big jerk chicken smokin dinner tonight, a pool party today. Gauging by their music choices, I suspect they are primarily in their 50’s. At least they play a good choice of tunes at 400 decibles. I went by the pool to take the garbage out, and there were a couple dozen peeps there enjoying the sun and water.
We decided to take a break from the music, and go to town for a late lunch. There had to be 70 people in the pool when we went by. Yikes! I think I’ll wait for the chlorine to activate over night, and maybe I’ll go in tomorrow after they all head out.
This is looking at the floating marina from the parking lot.
I only got a couple of shots in town of Alton. This cool old building on the corner is now an ice cream shop! Several of the streets are made from old ship ballast bricks. Pretty cool for a town that is hundreds and hundreds of miles up the Mississippi River from salt water to have ballast brick streets. It’s like something you’d see in New Orleans.
Our destination was the Old Bakery Beer Co. Part of the building started its life as the Colonial Bakery in the late 1800’s. Through a fire in 1929 and a series of remodels, it remained a bakery until the early 1980’s when it shut down. The Old Bakery Beer Company was born in early 2015, and they focus on sustainable, handcrafted beers with organically grown American hops and malts. They have kept many of the historical elements of the building to try to honor its past.
Inside, the tables are well spaced for covid protocol, and they required masks. We’re seeing that more and more again, but not consistently across all establishments. We sat at the bar, because that’s the best place to get samples. They had a stout and porter, so we ordered one of each….after I tried them both. 😉 And we ordered a couple of burgers. Yum.
The whole interior of the building is subway tile. This wall was painted, depecting Abraham Lincoln and someone? I looked it up, because I’ve seen other references to Ol Abe in this town. We are in his home state of Illinois, after all. Anyway, it has to do with the last of seven legendary public debate meetings between Republican Abraham Lincoln and Democrat incumbent Stephen A. Douglas, in the contest for a U.S. Senate seat in 1858. The debate brought Mr. Lincoln into the national eye, and we all know how that eventually changed history. Back then, the state legislature voted for the U.S. Senate seats, (rather than the public vote), and Mr. Lincoln lost the vote. But just two years later, he won the public vote over Mr. Douglas in the presidential race, and Mr. Lincoln became the 16th president.
This was just a long hallway to the outside tables and umbrellas, going past the brewery equipment through the windows on the left. It just kinda looked cool in black & white.
There was some historical memorabilia around. It is a very large building!
Ha – this did make me smile.
We had full bellies on, so we waddled on back to the marina. I took this picture from the top of the levy, between the town streets and the marina. There have been years when the river has flooded over this levy! Don’t take lightly what the Mighty Mississippi can do! You can’t really make it out in this picture, but on the far left, above the red car, you can barely see some water to the left of the trees. That is our next lock – the Mel Price Lock – the first on the Mississippi. It will drop us down about 23 feet, and it is huge. The main chamber is 1200’ long and 110’ feet wide. The auxillary chamber is 600’ long and 110’ wide. All of the locks on the Illinois river that we’ve been through have been the ‘smaller’ size (600 x 110). The good thing is that the main chamber here can accommodate an entire 15 barge tow load, so they don’t have to break down and do two transits. And, since there is an auxillary chamber, we don’t necessarily have to wait for the BIG commercial traffic before we can go through. Oh! I found this interesting tidbit: A modern 15-barge tow transports the equivalent of 1,050 large semi-trucks (26,250 cargo tons, 875,000 bushels, or 17,325,000 gallons). This is why river commerce is so important – they move A LOT of material!!
I also found this intersting chart which shows the effect of the locks on the Illinois River, from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River. Through the nine locks, we’ve dropped about 170’ in elevation in 326 miles.
This was just fun. The little boat on the trailer belongs to the ConTrios yacht club. (ConTrios = Conflence of Three Rivers… Illinois, Missouri, and Mississippi.) There are two big blue barrel smokers in it, and that is what was cooking up their jerk smoked dinner tonight. They really are a fun bunch of people, but man…. we sure couldn’t keep up with them if we tried! They party hard and long! Oh to be young(er).
Today was all about sunshine and music and pool fun for the yacht club visitors. We stayed on board most of the day except for our walk to town for lunch. Tomorrow should be quieter so we can enjoy some of the marina amenities ourselves.
At least I did get some reservations confirmed for next week, and our flight to see family booked for Christmas! Sometimes it’s good to just have some down time to ponder what’s next. 😄