Heading south on the Illinois Sept 14 - 19

After leaving the Sheehan Island anchorage south of Ottawa we continued down the Illinois River enjoying the favorable downstream current pushing us along. Shore birds were frequent. An example was this bird which I believe is a Blue Heron that hunts fish and turtles by standing still and grabbing unsuspecting prey.












This beautiful bridge is, I believe, the I-80 highway bridge. Kaye and I have been on it many times heading west and east. It looks much better by water.















As we approached Peoria we encountered the stern wheel excursion boat "The Spirit of Peoria" heading up river.


















We pulled into the Hamm's Holiday Harbor Marina just north of Peoria. It was an unusual marina. There were two obsolete River Gambling boats moored there from Rock Island and other areas where at one time the gambling casinos had to be capable of moving. I understand this is no longer the case.
We did enjoy a visit by my cousin Artie (on my mother's side) from Bettendorf, Iowa. I am embarrassed to say that I have not seen her for what I think could be 45-50 years. Artie and her husband, Phil (pictured) spent the day with us and we all went out to lunch and a grocery store. We had a good German lunch and a great visit. Thanks!

After leaving Hamm's Marina we passed by downtown Peoria, home of Caterpillar's Headquarters.

After passing Peoria we saw several groups of these white birds. I'm not sure what they are called but they looked like white pelicans.

We are starting to see bigger tows. (They are called tows even though they all push their barges.) We occasionally have to call them on VHF radio channel 13 to determine which side to pass them on in a narrow channel.

This tow was stopped in the river and based on the cars on shore it appeared that this was a crew change location. The current crew was boarding the tow boat's tender to go to shore.

We passed by Beardstown (known years ago as the home of the Beardstown Ladies investment club who wrote a book about their high returns, before it was revealed that they were counting their contributions as part of their "returns.")

We anchored a few miles below Beardstown and dinghied back to tie up at a barge in downtown. We walked around downtown and discovered this old courthouse that was the sight of the trial where Abraham Lincoln defended Duff Anderson against a murder charge. Lincoln got the dependent off by using the Farmer's Almanac to document moonlight. This picture shows the room where the trial took place.

The Bar Island anchorage provided a pretty sunset.

The tows that operate in the Northern Illinois River or Chicago Sanitary Canal have pilothouses that can be raised up to see over their barges and then lower down to clear the low bridges near Chicago.

We have seen many ferries on our trip. This one was unusual in that rather than having a ferry boat that had its own power, this ferry had a tow boat (tug) attached to its side. The attachment was a pivoting link so that the tow (tug) could pivot around and push the ferry in the forward direction whether going east or west.

This is a different ferry a few mile further south that is the same design as the one above and shows the tow pushing the ferry onto the highway on shore.

We have been underway (anchored or marinas) for 10 days since we left Chicago. This view is looking back to the northwest to the Mississippi River that joins the Illinois River just above Grafton, Illinois.