This morning when Tom checked on the status of the river with the US Coast Guard, the response was that the
We traveled back to the Starved Rock Lock 
which was open today with the water surging though the dam there. We entered the lock with four other loop’er cruisers and dropped 9 feet to the river below which was 10 feet above normal. 
The weather was great with bright sunshine and little wind.
There were many factories and train tracks immediately 
adjacent to the waterway. We cruised past the massive LOF (Libbey Owens Ford) glass factory. We passed 
over 177 barges on the river today almost all headed north. Some were tied up and stalled along the banks, and others were in transit being powered by large flatnosed tugboats. The largest transient group we saw was 15 barges, 3 across and 5 deep (about 1000 feet long) being pushed by tandem tugboats. It was amazing to me how the 
tugboat captains were able to negotiate the river and thread their 
barges through bridges. You could see them turning 1000 feet of barge in front of them to go between the bridge piers. We saw open barges full of coal, tankers and flat, closed-in barges. The river was bustling with commerce, but you got the feeling that maybe traffic was still slow due to the barges along the banks not engaged.
We passed by long stretches of shoreline that was totally natural and undeveloped woodlands. The water was still and wide with just the beginning of fall color in some of the trees along the shore. The dark shallows of the 
river had become a graveyard of the floating debris. We could see large tree branches extruding from the smooth water surface like arm of a skeleton. We saw several channel markers on small islands that had trapped huge pieces of drift wood and when the water receded, the huge washed trees were stranded there. 
The channel was narrow, so we did not get very close to them, but we also spotted at a distance a colony of white pelicans sunning themselves.
As we moved farther along the river, we saw more and more flooding. Places where the water over the banks of the Illinois merged with lakes along the side making a broad water surface. Places where houses built on the river had deep water in their ground floor. 
We passed under Abraham Lincoln Memorial bridge (Interstate 39) and dropped our wake in courtesy to bridge workers on a barge under the bridge who were raising work scaffolding for bridge repairs.
Around 4:00 we pulled into the Wharf Harbor marina and are docked 
for the first time in a covered slip. Tonight we are docked in Peoria and the water here is 10 feet above normal. The marina had built a temporary bridge from the pier to the steps on the shore so you could walk off the pier. Tom and I took our bikes in to town to discover Peoria and discovered that about the distance could be covered on a bike path along the river. It crossed through a green recreational park and by a open air Fine Art Show (all the little white tents were closed for the night). The waterfront still had flooded areas, but we found Joe’s Crab Shack that was open and had dinner. It was next to a 
beautiful white river paddlewheel boat named the Spirit of Peoria. During our dinner on the restaurant deck, the steamer pipe organ played happy 
circus tunes as they loaded their passengers for their evening cruise.
Tonight we are back on the boat and were delighted to find that our TV attennae was able to give us a station that carried the Presidential Debate.
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