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.