Illinois

Thursday September 9, 2021.
Temp: 80/54, Humidity: 39/94%, Top Wind: gust N14 mph, Precip: None- sunny, Miles Traveled: 111 in 8.5 hours 🚤,

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A LONG day. Yes, it was. It started out with the obnoxious sound of an alarm clock. It was barely getting light outside, but our plan was to get moving for our long day down the Mississippi. One nice thing about being tied up to a wall with no power. It makes for a really quick getaway in the morning! Just wipe down the windows, untie the lines and peel out! We don’t even make coffee until we’re under way, so it’s a little easier on the batteries. It was very peaceful and pretty outside this morning, and only about 55 degrees. We put on our fuzzies, and stealthily tootled away, leaving the other two boats to wonder what happened to us.

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Wednesday September 8, 2021.
Temp: 83/64, Humidity: 33/91%, Top Wind: NW13 mph, Precip: None- sunny, Miles Traveled: 84 in less than 7.5 hours 🚤, Number of locks: 2, total drop of maybe 12’?… should be more like 35!

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As planned, the annoying sound of my alarm went off at 5:45. I wasn’t ready for that. 😴. But, up and attum and get with the program. Start the coffee. Check Amazon and see if my book came. Nope. Take the key to the drop box. Come back and go upstairs to open the windows. Check the Lock queue to see if there’s anybody there. Nope. Finish coffee. Unplug, get lines ready to go. Call the lock. He says ‘call me when you’re out of the marina’. Untie, back out, tootle out, call the lock again. He says ‘come on!’. Sweet! All of that before the sunshine even showed his pretty face!

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Monday September 6, 2021.
Temp: 88/65, Humidity: 31/81%, Top Wind: SW12 mph, Precip: None- sunny, Miles Traveled: none

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It was a mass exodus this morning as all of the time travelers bugged out. We just watched as they kept leaving and the marina quieted down.

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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.

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Friday September 3, 2021.
Temp: 79/64, Humidity: 50/80%, Top Wind: SE11 mph, Precip: none- cloudy , Miles Traveled: 16

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This was a pretty uneventful day. We were just moving down the river about fifteen miles to the next town, to get us farther along for our next long day next week. Alton Marina will give us three days free if we pay for three…. so that’s a great idea! We’re planning to stay for a total of five, based on the current weather predictions.
This was the party dock where Island Girl was parked out at the end in Grafton. I imagine that these beer signs and lights will be lit, the refrigerators full, and party on the patio will be starting soon on this holiday weekend.

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Thursday September 2, 2021.
Temp: 78/54, Humidity: 54/100%, Top Wind: SE9 mph, Precip: none- sunny all day 😎, Miles Traveled: 85 in 8.5hours, Number of Locks: 1, down about 5’.

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Another early get-up day, but that’s what runnin‘ the rivers is like for us – start the day early so we can go far. Sometimes the Lord blesses me with an extraordinary sight as a reward for getting up before I want to. This morning was one of those days. This place where we are anchored is in a bend in the river, so our bow is facing east. Just soak this view up for a minute. At 6:00am, the moon was just barely less than half, so a bit of a crescent shape. The river was surprisingly calm, and the colors were amazing how they still showed the dark blue of the night sky above, and the bright orange of the promise of a beautiful new day on the horizon. WOW!

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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.

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Tuesday August 31, 2021.
Temp: 80/69, Humidity: 67/92%, Top Wind: E9 mph, Precip: cloudy all day, evening rain, not as hot, Miles Traveled: maybe 20 miles by car

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The cloudy day felt really nice! It was still warm, but not stifling hot! We went into the office to pay for another night, then set out for a shopping expedition. Oh. Here is a shot of the marina, and the dock where we are. 😳. The water level is SOO LOW! Some of the docks are sitting on the ground. It looks like the water has dropped a few inches even from yesterday, because the rocks are wet a few inches up. There is no wave action in this marina, so it isn’t from any water movement from boats here. Hmmm.🤔. I keep looking at Island Girl, and hoping her bow isn’t on the bottom. This is why we did not park stern-in!

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Monday August 30, 2021.
Temp: 87/69, Humidity: 57/100%, Top Wind: E6 mph, Precip: none, not quite as HOT, Miles Traveled: 150 by car

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This was a really nice day with not much wind, but still too warm for us to be anchoring on the river with no A/C. The forecast said this would be the case, so we are glad to be staying put at IVY. I called Enterprise Rental Car at 8:00 and asked if they could come and pick us up for our 10:00 reservation. The manager was very apologetic, and wished that they could. But the Governor of Illinois just activated new COVID safety protocol rules effective today. All interior spaces require masks, and all transportation companies require a barrier between employees and passengers. REALLY? He said that they have their passenger pick-up van being modified, but won’t have it until tomorrow. (That’s probably just a story… I don’t think they do pick-ups in COVID.). He offered that if we took an Uber, that he could reduce our rental fee for the Uber charge – just bring the receipt. Really? That would be great! Now let’s hope we can find one!

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Sunday August 29, 2021.
Temp: 🥵 88/76, Humidity: 61/87%, Top Wind: SW14 mph, Precip: YES ⛈ and HOT 🔥, Miles Traveled: 71, Number of Locks: 1, down 19’ today

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This was going to be a long, hot day, but we only had one lock to do! YAY! The Starved Rock Lock was about eight miles down river from Ottawa, so we needed about an hour to get there. The next lock down stream from that is in Peoria – over 70 miles away, so it’s really hard to judge what tows may be coming upstream that could cause us any trouble or delays. I looked at the queue report for down-bound traffic and could see that a big split load had gone through the Marseille lock early this morning, but it didn’t show anything else. YAY! Hopefully it will be through the next lock by the time we get there. We hopped to it and were off the dock just after 6:30 since we likely had a hot, nine hour day ahead of us. We were treated to a beautiful sunrise!!!

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