September 18, 2008: Joliet, Illinois

The adventure continues. This morning Lake Michigan was a rolling surf as left Monroe Bay. It was a challenge to figured out where the navigable path was amongst the swinging moored sailboats. We cruised the short distance in the lake north to the Chicago Harbor Lock where we tied up to the wall briefly waiting for the lock to open to the lake side. The lock ride was short – up a mere 4 feet. As we exited the lock, we passed under the Lake Shore Bridge where we had biked over several times on the way to the Navy Pier. The next thing we noticed was what looked like a fire hose squirting a high arch of water over the Chicago River from the north bank almost to the far side. This is the Centennial Fountain at 300 N McClurg Court which goes off once a hour during the summer and is the center of a huge fountain there. As we edged by on the south side, the air was full of rainbows from the mist.

What a fun cruise under the bridges of the City of Chicago: Columbus. Michigan, Wabash, and State (to name the first few) and to see the beautiful city from the water. It will be one of the highlights from the trip. We passed by the narrow green parks with steps up to the bridges lined with fluttering flags. Many of the buildings with reflective glass gave blue abstract images of the city beyond them. The river view showed how Chicago is really a multistory city with highways running below the city and trains running above it. On the outskirts of the city we arrived at the Amtrak railroad bridge which only had 12 feet of clearance just as a train was approaching. We pulled to the side where there was no place to tie up. Tom jumped off and tied us to a boulder on the bank. This was a first for us.

Gradually we left the city behind us and cruised into a very commercial area with heavy barges carrying coal and salt and gravel. One place we passed a metal recycling facility and saw them sorting the metal with a huge magnet on the end of a crane. The crane reminded me of that cartoon hero - WALL-E. We also followed a tug pushing two barges for a while who called us on the radio and told us to come by him. He pushed his two barges into the bank on one side as another double barge came towards us from the other direction so we could safely pass. We did see some logs floating by us in the current, but we were able to avoid them.

Tom had wanted some missing charts for this part of the voyage, but the only place he could find them was at Marine Navigation in LaGrange, Illinois. After several phone calls with Laura, she agreed to send us the charts by courier to be delivered to a tug boat, the Mary C at mile marker 301. So as we sped down the Illinois river, we spotted Bill Russell’s Illinois Marine Towing tug boat, and pulled out of the current into a docking area for huge tugs (some labeled as Dangerous – presumably carrying fuel). We had arrived before our package, but didn’t wait long before Bill gracious collected the large package, ferried it out to us and handed it to Tom standing on the bow. Life with Tom is always unusual.

The second lock of the day was Lockport, a huge commercial lock which we went through with a double barge, tugboat, and another pleasure craft, The Foreign Exchange. This lock dropped us in elevation by 40 feet. As we neared Joliet, the Des Plaines River joined the Illinois with a surge of flow coming over rapids and seemed to increase the current going forward. The current was rapid as we approached the river side park in Joliet but other boaters helped us tie up on the wall between the Kismet and a large sail boat. Several of these boaters have been here for a week waiting for the water to go down. Joliet is at mile marker 288 which is 38 miles south of the Chicago Lock.