Grafton Harbor

Grafton Harbor offers a great "stay 4 nights, get 3 free" deal, so we decided to take full advantage of it while we waited for the Mississippi water levels to drop. With 7 Loop boats in the harbor, a potluck seemed in order ... delicious as always and we assembled after dinner for this group shot.

The next day, we launched the dinghy to have a look at the current. Here's a view of Grafton Harbor from the water. The small white building at the top of the hill (above the apartment building) is Aerie's Winery and Restaurant. Diann (Noah Genda) had arranged for their shuttle to pick us all up for dinner that night.

Out on the main Mississippi Channel, our hand held GPS measured a current of 2.5 mph.

The weather is hot and the pool is delightful.

The shuttle from Aries picked up 8 of us for dinner ... great view. The islands in the middle separate the Mississippi from the Illinois, with the Illinois River in the foreground. The two rivers run almost parallel and curl around at the confluence.

Great food and good company.

Here are 5 of the Looper boats at the marina. We are situated right across from the gas dock and the runabout dock ... this weekend was busy, busy. People are constantly in and out, gassing up, eating at the restaurant and walking through town. It's was quite entertaining sitting on the boat watching the action.

As of today, all but us and the red tug (Freedom) have left. Of course, all but us and Noah Genda are heading south, so it's a bit sad and nostalgic to watch them go. We've met so many wonderful new friends on this trip ... sure will miss them and all the adventures.

Great Loop Complete !!!

We set out early to make it through the Peoria Lock and after only an hour wait, we made it through with 4 other Looper boats. This was the lock under repair and currently open only limited hours.

Everywhere we cruise, there are recreational boaters out enjoying American and Canadian waters and the Illinois River is no exception. Even with the Asian carp jumping in the wakes of almost every small boat we see, these folks are still out boating on the weekend.

The heat wave broke and we've had beautiful weather with 80's by day and 60's by night ... worked out well for us since the lower half of the Illinois has very few marinas, so we had to anchor out for a couple of nights. The mornings were cool and lovely.

We locked through our last lock on the Illinois with this small tow. In all our years of boating on the Mississippi, neither Steve nor I could recall ever locking through with a tow.

Here's one of the old deserted Illinois River locks.

There are also alot of abandoned sunken barges on the Illinois. Judging by the size of the trees growing in this one, we'd say it's been here for quite a while.

We pulled into Grafton Harbor with our good Looper friends, Tom and Diann (Noah Genda) who had began their Loop at their home port near the Quad Cities (on the Mississippi). We were all pretty excited because Grafton marked the completion of the Great Loop for both Noah Genda and Shingebiss. We had ordered our gold burgee (signifying successful completion of one Loop) to be sent to Grafton Harbor. We decided to have a spontaneous "gold burgee raising ceremony" and invited the crews of the six other Looper boats that were in the marina to come and celebrate with us. Here we are with our new burgee.

Grafton Harbor is located at the confluence of the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers where the waters are wide and filled with small islands. As we approached the marina, the current increased from about 1 mph to 3 mph because the Mississippi is flooding north of here. Even though we've completed our Loop, we still have to travel 600 upstream miles on the mighty Miss to get home. We're watching the river levels, both on the NOAA web site and via a mark Steve put on the spud pole in front of us, and won't be leaving until the water drops significantly. While we wait, we're enjoying our leisure time and all the accoutrements (including great WiFi, pool, and courtesy car) at this neat little marina.

If you are still following along, here's a little refresher map showing where we were at the beginning of each of the past 12 months. The black line traces the waterways we traveled. The lighter lines show alternate Loop routes.

The Loop is complete, but the blog will continue until we get home ... hoping for mid-September.

Flat Brown Water

One more look at the Monroe Harbor breakwater as we head toward the Chicago Harbor Lock for our much anticipated cruise through downtown Chicago. We had experienced one of the Chicago Architectural Boat Tours with our friends Sue and Ron, so we knew it would be a very special part of our Loop.

The Chicago Harbor Lock is right around the corner from Monroe Harbor. Note the large metallic structure on the right. Designed to resemble a Great Lakes ship, it serves as the Lockmasters Building.

After the Lock, we passed under the Lake Shore Drive Bridge. We will go under 40 bridges in the next five miles.

We are now in the Chicago River with both banks lined with sky scrapers and a river walk running along side. This was our view to port ...

... and this was our view straight ahead.

Tucked among the sky scrapers are older brick buildings and many restaurants overlooking the River.

About two miles inland the River forks into the South Branch and the North Branch. We turned into the South Branch which looked like this.

The South Branch goes right by the Sears Tower, seen in this picture looking back.

This Amtrak Bridge is only 10' off the water and it does not lift during rush hour, so we timed our arrival to be after 9 am.

After this bridge the River takes a turn to the southwest, and the industry begins. Here's a sample of one ... a power plant.

The Chicago River is linked to the Illinois River via the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. In the early 1900's the good people of Chicago realized that taking their drinking water out of Lake Michigan and also sending their sewage that way via the River was not such a good idea. So the Chicago River was reversed via locks and canals, and eventually routed into the southern flowing Illinois River (and then the Mississippi). At the same time, the shipping canal was created and Loopers now have a way to return to the Rivers from the Great Lakes. The old canal walls are kinda neat, but there are signs all along this section that caution against swimming, jet skiing, wading, tubing or any human contact with this water .... hmmmm ...

The current Lake Michigan challenge is to keep the Asian Carp from entering the Lake. The Army Corps of Engineers is maintaining an electrical current "fish barrier" on the Illinois River that is either working or it's not, depending on who you talk to. There is a sign telling boats to call the Coast Guard on their VHF radio before they transit the barrier. We heard other boats call and the CG read them the rules for passing through the barrier. For example, boats under 20 feet cannot pass, passengers must get into the cabin of the boat (or wear a life jacket) and remain seated, and give a security call on your radio before you enter ... so we did because we didn't want to face fines and/or imprisonment.

We stopped for the night at Joliet, where the city has a free wall, with electric. There is alot of barge traffic and they passed quite close to us here.

It's a bit of a relief to get off Lake Michigan's big waves, although we miss the beautiful water and Steve really enjoyed the planning necessary for "big water" cruising. We've been staying in marinas because they are reasonably priced and we need the AC once we stop for the night. We've been traveling for a few days with Woody and Judy, from Maine. Woody is a retired lobsterman who bought the hull for their boat and built the rest himself.

The waterway runs 327 miles from Chicago to Grafton where it enters the Mississippi. We're currently about half way and the shoreline is much less industrial and quite pretty in parts ...

... some big rock cliffs.

Most of the tows are three long with one towboat, so they put the three barges in the lock and unhook the towboat and put it into the lock beside the barges. We've had to wait an hour or more at almost every lock. At one they told us to tie up to one of the "dolphins" above the lock to wait. Lucy had to get out and eat a little grass that was growing in the cracks.

Captain Steve is back in his element passing tow boats.

We passed by this marina where the owner is collecting old paddleboats.

The Illinois River is low as shown by these exposed tree roots.

Our next lock is Peoria where the lock is under repair and boats are only being locked through from 5 pm until 7 am. With the amount of barge traffic, they are busy with barges all night and we don't want to run at night anyway. On Sundays, however, they lock boats through all day, so we are spending Friday and Saturday night at the Eastport Marina and taking a little break from our long days of travel. Tonight we had free tacos at the bar and a swim in the pool, so it's not a bad place to wait it out. Here's a 13 second video of the Chicago River skyscrapers, a definite highlight of our trip.

Monroe Harbor, Chicago

Good ol' Lake Michigan had to show us one more time who's the boss around here with 2-3 foot waves when only one foot were predicted. Oh well, it was our last day on the big water and it was a memorable one.

The Chicago skyline can be seen at about 20 miles out ... here's what we saw about 5 miles out.

We came into Monroe Harbor on a Sunday, the final day of the Chicago Air and Water Show. Our assigned mooring ball was right on the edge of the wide entrance that splits the North and South Harbors. After securing the boat to the mooring ball, we were hopeful that the wave action would smooth out. It seemed like every boat in the harbor was out for the day and as they all came back in the wakes continued to rock us almost as if we were still out on the Lake. We've been in several mooring fields on this trip and this is the first one that was NOT a "no wake" zone.

We had a great view of Buckingham Fountain right from the boat.

By dark, both the wind and the boat wakes settled down as we enjoyed the lights of the spectacular Chicago skyline. The next morning, we launched the dinghy and took some pictures of Shingebiss on her mooring ball.

To go ashore, however, we opted to use the Monroe Tender service and be picked up at our boat. These nimble little double ended tenders run around the harbor from 7 am 'til 3 am bringing boaters out and back to their moored boats. We found the service to be efficient and friendly.

Our first stop ashore was Millenium Park, built in 2004. The beautiful amphitheater has concerts all summer and seats over 11,000 people.

The "Bean" is the most popular feature of the park. This unique mirrored sculpture delights young and old as they walk around and under it, checking out the reflections.

Here's our reflection in the Bean as I take the picture.

We walked over one of the many, many Chicago River bridges that we will pass under when we transit this river tomorrow.

Down on the Riverwalk, we passed by this fountain.

For the first ten minutes of every hour, the "water arc" is turned on ... not knowing what it was, we had to wait around to find out. Here it is.

We walked out to the end of Navy Pier, with it's dozens for restaurants and tour boats. Our final stop was back to Buckingham Fountain. One of the largest fountains in the world, it was designed in France and donated to Chicago by the Buckingham family in 1928. It's so huge, you can't get it all in one picture.

Our all day walk had taken us to our favorite highlights on the Chicago lakefront. It's a great city and we're very excited to cruise through the Chicago River tomorrow.

50 mile days

We've completed our journey down the east coast of Lake Michigan and are currently in Michigan City, Indiana, with plans to head for Chicago. The Lake gave us one more day of big waves that were not predicted at all, but we've had three perfect cruising days since then with sunny, hot, humid, and calm weather. We stopped in three more Michigan Harbors: Ludington, Muskegon, and South Haven. All of the towns have breakwaters with cute little lights leading to the harbor ...

... and they all have beautiful sand beaches.

We've been leaving early and encountered a bit of fog on some days, so we are grateful for our broadband radar that lets us monitor other nearby watercraft.

South Haven was a particularly favorite stop. The town is built around a narrow creek that is absolutely crammed with marinas and restaurants. We were fortunate to get a slip.
Looper friends Tom and Diann (Noah Genda) were docked right next to us. We hadn't seen them since NYC, so it was really great to see them again and get caught up. We had a good fish dinner in a local restaurant and enjoyed walking around this fun little town.

We had another long day of cruising ahead of us, so we left early. The South Haven Light was still on ...

... and got to see this lovely sunrise.

We are no longer traveling with Jack and Nan (Eschaton) as they are taking their time completing the Lake Michigan route and we are getting just a bit in a hurry to get home. Spending a night in the Chicago Harbor is about the only "must see" that we have left on our Looper Wish List. The Chicago shoreline has accomodations for 5000 boats, spread over 7 marinas and 1000 mooring balls. A quick review of their website http://www.chicagoharbors.info/ however, and we learned that only about 10% of them are for transients and are usually reserved far in advance, especially over the many festival weekends in Chicago. We are on a waiting list for a slip, but have a confirmed reservation for two nights on a mooring ball.

The marina we are in tonight is also pretty big, 600 slips. Just look at how long this dock is ...

We're sitting in the AC, listening to the Twins (alone in first place, at least for a day) and thinking we'll be home by mid-September, which will require us to keep moving at a pretty good pace.