Mile Marker 00 - Goodbye Illinois River & Hello Mississippi River

After three long travel days we arrived last night in Grafton, IL.  The marina is located at MM00 on the Illinois River and is advertised as the Key West of the mid-west.  It is sort of like Key West and PIB all rolled into one and we enjoyed very much one of the local establishments last evening while getting to know some of the local folks.

We covered 242 miles in 3 days and at 10 miles an hour, that is a lot of time on the bridge especially when you factor in lock delays.  When we left Heritage Harbor on Thursday we encountered a 2 1/2 hour lock delay at the one and only lock we had to pass through that day - Starved Rock Lock (17' drop).  By the time we pulled into the Peoria City dock it was dark, raining and cold.  We'd been traveling for 11 hours and I was starting to get sort of nervous about encountering a tow in the dark.  Only one other boat was there, Tango, and they were just coming back from dinner at Joe's Crab Shack upon our arrival.  We got the boat secured and happily discovered they had 30 Amp power for our refrigeration which was a pleasant surprise.  Many of our companion boats that we've been traveling with the past few days had stopped about an hour earlier at the Illinois Valley Yacht club, but the draft was too shallow for us.  The prospect of making dinner was just too much for me and since it was free to dock there overnight, we enjoyed dinner at Joe's Crab Shack just like Tango did.

On Friday we arrived in Beardston by 4:30 thanks to a quick pass through Peoria Lock (8' drop) which was just opening when we arrived.  In Beardston we had zero amenities and rafted off of a tug that was rafted to a couple of construction barges.  Cash only to stay overnight - no names - no registration.  We thought possibly to protect the company should an unfortunate accident happen traversing the maze to land across the tug and barges and up a very scary staircase!!

Took the Plunge way out on the end behind the Tug

The stairs to land from the barge

Stairs actually looked scarier going down.  Notice the coiled rope at
the bottom used for anti-skid before crossing the gangway to the barge.

We had to step off swim platform to the tug and then walk the
length of tug to get to the barge to cross to land.

Once we got to the front of the tug, we crossed the two construction
barges to the staircase at the wall to get to land.

Because there was no electricity we couldn't run the fridge.  The boat has a generator but the exhaust hose needs to be replaced.  The boat also has an invertor but it is non-functioning.  Both the generator exhaust hose and invertor were ordered this morning.  We plan on staying in Grafton for a week so hopefully parts arrive before we leave.   "BertGyver" came to the rescue yet again and managed to install a suitable small invertor with pieces and parts he had on the boat.  Strong enough amps that we could run the fridge overnight and save our food but not enough amps to cook dinner so up the scary stairs we went in search of dinner, which we did find.  I am married to the most resourceful man on the planet.  It is amazing what he can do with an truck camper invertor and a couple of re-purposed extension cords.  All that engineering after a full day of driving the boat.  It took him about an hour to get it all hooked up when we arrived.

The green box is the make-shift invertor that Bert installed to
get  the fridge going for our overnight stay with no electric.

We also got to enjoy a beautiful sunset while rafted to the tug, but in the morning it was fog!  We had to delay our departure for just a bit and as a result, got tied up at the LaGrange Lock (10' drop) for about 90 minutes.  LaGrange was the last lock on the Illinois River.  We've passed through eight locks so far and dropped a total of 157 feet!  

Peaceful and Beautiful Sunset at night

Scary fog in the morning

Grafton marina offers a buy four nights, get three nights free option, so we plan to just kick back and relax for a week here and wait for the ordered parts to arrive.  As always, the boat needs to be washed so that will be a project one day this week.  Next weekend we look forward to having some family come to visit and ride along with us on our 1st day on the Mississippi River to Hoppie's Marina in Kimmswick, MO.  

We've seen some pretty interesting sights as we've come down the Illinois River this week so I'll post some pictures of what we've seen soon.