September 19, 2008: Joliet to Ottawa, IL

We enjoyed having the electrical power in Joliet after not having it for a week, but we are not staying here long. Five other looper boats are moving on to Ottawa this morning so we decided to move on as well.

Among all the commercial water traffic I have mentioned, I should mention the birds – Yesterday I saw two tall blue herons individually fishing along the banks on a wooded stretch of the river. I started counting the snowy white egrets on the waters edge over the past two days of river travel, but there have been so many that I have lost count. But the amazing sighting was today. I saw a colony of pelicans, but unlike any I have ever seen before on a rock. They were all pure white but were distinguishable by the remarkable body shape of the pelican. I looked them up and they were American White Pelicans that live on fresh inland lakes and rivers. Strikingly, they gather their food by catching it as they swim rather than and diving on fish they see while soaring above.

The locks on the river system are all run by the Army Corp of Engineers and run 24 hours a day, seven days a week servicing both commercial traffic and pleasure boats and there is no charge for passage. The locks are huge – 200 yards long (two football fields) and a generally sided by a dam which helped to manage the water flow. The locks are operated by the gravity of the water and are important in maintaining the water level.

As we approached the Brandon Road Lock, the river was bordered by a levy on the south side, obviously built to make the river deep enough for the commercial traffic, barges and tugs. The top of the levy was even with the top of two story homes beyond it so you can imagine how important it is to not overflow the levy. The Brandon Road Lock was the first one this morning, and let us down 38 feet. After passing through, we heard on the radio that they were increasing the flow over the dam to 7000 cubic feet per second to lower the level above the lock. The next was Dresden Island Lock, which normally drops 21 feet, but because of the height of the flooded pool below, today we will only drop 9 feet.

With the water level about 12 feet above normal, below the Dresden Lock we really

began to see the flooding. There are no barges running now in this section of the river although we did see some moored along the way. Many of the barge line up and holding docks are under water. We passed miles and miles of flooded corn fields. You could see big hardwood trees out in the water where the bank should be and the water surface extending out behind them into standing corn stalks. In Morris we passed the massive Cargill Grain Elevator which seemed deserted, and we hoped that these farmers got their crop in before the flood.

I think it is very interesting to sense the pulse of industry along the river. We passed many barge docks along the river at oil refineries (Mobile, Texas Gulf, and Exxon), Power plants, granaries and chemical companies (Dow, Reichhold, Quantum, and Amoco). Some of these included train terminals where cars were lined up to take the resulting products from the barge content. One place we saw a train yard full of black cylindrical fuel tankers run by the CSX railroad.

The Marseilles Lock was the last one for today and the last one that is open heading south. This lock lowered us another 16 feet into the river just above Ottawa, our destination for today. The lock master told us that they had had floods before, but never anything like this. He also told us that the farmers had lost their crop because the corn would not have been ready for harvest until October. When we reached Ottawa, we had expected to be able to dock on the 600 foot municipal wall there where they offer power and dockage at the edge of the city. It was disappointing but not surprising to find that the area was flooded and the current was rapid through the area with the Fox river adding its flow to the Illinois there.

Then we called the Heritage Harbor and found a slip there. This beautiful new Marina is about 2 miles back up river from Ottawa and had both power and water available. Tom was so glad to have water from the dock that he spent the first couple of hours scrubbing the decks. We are now here waiting for the Starved Rock Lock to open before we can proceed. We had a wonderful deep rose sunset which included a granary in the silhouette. We are glad to be safe and comfortable and will try to find town with our bikes tomorrow.