Paducah KY to Grand Rivers KY 9/29/17

We really enjoyed our stay in Paducah.  There were many town employees and council members that came down to say hi and also a TV crew that came down and interviewed some loopers for the 6 o'clock news.  I have done TV interviews before and never liked the way they edit what you have to say so I layed low and was not interviewed. We stayed long enough for most of the other boats to get off of the dock because we wanted to pump out, cause it's free.  We were visited this morning by the town manager and told him how much we appreciated the new town dock and also how much we enjoyed visiting their town.  Mother Ocean and Tyreless came in this morning and we chatted with them before we departed.

The pump out was going well and I finished the aft tank and went to get the forward tank.  The hose was a little short and when I hooked it up it came off in mid suction which causes the product to be sucked up the pipe and when it comes off it sprays all over the guy pumping.  So yes I was in shit this morning and had to have a shower and wash my clothes when I finished.  This is the second time this has ever happened to me and I still don't like it!!!

This is the junction of the Ohio and Cumberland Rivers.  Only another 950 miles to Pittsburgh if we stayed on the Ohio!!

We left around 11:00 and headed up the Ohio River for the Cumberland which leads to Kentucky Lake, our destination for the next week.  We were cruising along and making good time against the current.  Debbie read that we should call the lock and when we did the lock master said he was prepping the lock now for the PCs and if we could we should hustle our way up there.  We gunned her and made it to the lock just as the doors were opening and locked through with Getting Looped a Viking from Michigan.  Getting Looped called me on the radio and said he was low on fuel and would I mind if he went out first.  No problem and off he went.  Our reservation for Green turtle Resort was not until tomorrow and we were looking for a place to anchor when I saw Getting Looped head straight into Green Turtle.  I watched him and thought of calling on the radio but decided maybe he knew where he was going.   Well he didn't and he ran aground.  I called and asked if he needed help and he did so we anchored and launched the dingy to go help.  Mike introduced himself and we pushed the boat around and then back out into the channel with the dingy.  Hopefully everything is OK.

Lots of Gravel pits along the Cumberland

They even have a pulley system to move the barge back and forth

Debbie and I backtracked to near the lock and found a nice anchorage with a boat ramp and docks to take Abby for a walk.  Time for cocktails now and dinner.

We have finished watching all of the episodes of Homeland and just started Downton Abbey.  So far so good, I like it

Green Turtle Resort tomorrow for a week and I go off to Louisville to do a show for Quadco.  It will be fun to see the boys.

Paducah Day Two 9/28/17

We arrived here yesterday and they told us they were full and could not take our reservation.  We stayed anyways and no one else showed up because they were all stuck at lock 53 because there was a log caught in the door and they couldn't close the door.  When we awoke this morning we decided since there was a BBQ festival in town and lots to see and do that we would stay another day.  We need to be in Green Turtle Resort for Sunday so I can work a trade show in Louisville next week.  If we had left today we would have been three days early so we thought we would enjoy a quite day here.

Debbie started to dismantle the main salon settee and I helped.  It's upholstered and has a zillion staples that all have to be removed and then we will recover it with new fabric.  We have ordered an upholstery stapler and materials to complete the job and we figured since I would be gone for a few days that this was a good time to start the project.

Anyways after some hard work we had an appetite and headed up to the BBQ festival to sample the wares. The BBQ was excellent and there were at least 20 different BBQ vendors as well as everything from fried turkey legs to deep fried Twinkies.  We passed on the Twinkies and stopped at an ice cream parlor for dessert after a pretty good BBQ sandwich. Downtown Paducah is really pretty, there are many brick paved streets and old historic buildings.  They have really made the most out of the 12 mile flood wall that was built to protect the town after many devastating floods.  There are 50 or more murals and they seem to be sponsored by different businesses and organizations who have done a great job of depicting history in Paducah.  Usually small towns are all the same.  Paducah has a real flavor to it.

There are 14 Looper boats on the wall tonight and we will head off for the Cumberland River tomorrow.

Lunch time and then all the boats came in.  The dock is full now

Debbie hanging out with the pig

These are the different flood levels over the years.  In the ground is the door that slides up the wall in the slots to close off the 12 mile flood wall that protects Paducah from the Ohio

All of these murals are painted on the land side of the dyke wall and are very well done

Very realistic paintings

This explains the condition of lock 52 and 53. They were built in 1928.  They have done very well for their age

Love trains

Especially real ones and steam at that

Paducah's downtown is really beautiful.  A real surprise with the cobblestone streets and historic buildings

Bean Branch Anchorage to Paducah KY 9/27/17

We woke up to another beautiful day.   I had a conference call this morning with the boys at Quadco and that took until about lunchtime.  All of the other four boats that came to join us in the anchorage last night headed for the next lock.  These two locks on the Ohio are very old and are being replaced, but it will be another 2-3 years before the project is completed.  The locks are so old that they constantly break down and the tows are lined up 10-15 deep in both directions.  Pleasure craft are usually locked through after three locks of waiting.  Yesterdays lock took us about 6 hours to get through and today we waited about three hours.  I didn't have high expectations and was not disappointed with our passage.  Better to have low expectations and be pleasantly surprised.  We met up with Chris and Amy on Imagine This and they tied off to us at lock 52 until we were called in.  After the lock it is a short run up to the new Paducah town dock and we are tied up there but they supposedly are full and do not have room for us.  We will see because there will not be another lockage of pleasure craft until after dark and I'm not even sure if there will be any pleasure craft coming here.  Imagine This has offered to let us raft if they do show up.  Right now we have filled up with water and are doing laundry and enjoying the AC.  It's hot again today, maybe we left Canada too soon!

Here is our lockage of 5 boats today.  The locks are all so old and rough you do not want to tie to the wall or in reality the round ugly rusted steel cassions

That's the lockmaster in the white shirt.  Behind that concrete wall is the hydraulics to operate the lock.  Its all pretty tired

Getting dark out.  This is inside the lock waiting for the chamber to fill

Commerce Anchorage to Bean Branch Creek 9/26/17

We really enjoyed our new found anchorage last night between two wing dams on the Mississippi.  There was virtually no wake from passing tows and we slept well.  We awoke to another beautiful day although a little hot for my liking not wanting to swim in the Mississippi or Ohio rivers.  I made Debbie the rest of that special bacon from Mariano's for breakfast with eggs and toast and then we headed off to finish our stretch on the Mississippi and start upriver on the Ohio river this afternoon. The last stretch of the river we hit over 14 knots at our normal cruising speed, due to the strong current.  That's almost 5 knots of current. When we turned up the Ohio we were down to 8 knots in about 1 1/2 knots of head current.  We passed lines of barges and tows waiting to get in line for the next locks and we had a feeling it was going to be a long wait.  There are two locks almost right away and as I write this we have been waiting for about 3 hours to get through the second lock.  I have seen worse and arrived with the attitude it was going to be a long wait and it has been quicker than I expected.  They are building a new lock to replace this one and you can see some of the construction pictures we took today.
We met a guy on a solar powered boat that has absolutely no fuel on-board and he is trying to be the first to do the Great Loop with no fuel consumed at all.  They don't even have propane and cook with an electric induction cooktop.
Abby was able to go for a walk when we tied up to wait for the lock she was happy as she didn't get a walk this morning.

This is the junction of the Mississippi and the Ohio, looking up the Ohio

The new Olmstead Lock still under construction. Note the huge overhead crane on two barges

An up-bound tow passed us pushing 4 barges wide by 7 long for a total of 28 barges.  The standing wake behind him from his prop wash was 6 feet high!

14.3 knots down river  with the current

Heading up the Ohio

That's a 5028 ton overhead crane at the top of the hill and a slide to get the assembled pieces down the hill to the river bank where they have another huge overhead crane on big barges to carry it out to the new locks.  They even had barges with cement mixers on them  4 mixers to a barge and three barges of mixers.  Must have poured a lot of concrete!

Well we finally got through the lock  and it was dark when we exited.  The Anchorage we had in mind was about 3 miles further north on the Ohio and we proceeded along with the help of the chart plotters and radar to find the unlit marks on a very dark night.  The radar made it easy to see where the marks were and if in fact they were there because some of the marks on the charts are not there anymore and there are some that are added but not on the charts. We along with Bucket List and Midas Touch made it to the anchorage at about 8:30 and we settled in for the night.  Luckily there were no tows downbound and we made it safely.  Now for a late dinner and then some TV.

As the sunsets we are finally going through the lock

A little nighttime navigation

Kaskaskia Lock to Commerce Anchorage 9/25/17

Kaskaskia Lock wall.

We took Abby over to the boat ramp beside the lock because there is no land access from the float we were tied to.  The picture below was when I was waiting for Debbie and Abby to get back from their walk.  We had breakfast and left around 9:00 AM headed for Little Diversion Channel.  The day went by quickly as we hit up to 14 knots at our usual RPM of 1150 which usually gives us about 9.5 Kts.  That means there is 4-5 knots of current in the might Mississippi.

We arrived at Little Diversion and looked in but decided it wasn't for us.  It's more or less a drainage ditch and not very wide with green water (not the nice kind) and looked buggy and shallow, so we decided to keep going. The boat "Bucket List that we had spent the night with on the lock wall stayed there.   

We met up with a small dredge in the port side of the channel and there was a three wide long tow up-bound taking up all of the rest of the channel.  We decided to wait out until the tow had cleared the dredge and were hovering above the dredge waiting on the tow.  The tow didn't have enough room and actually ran one of the channel markers over with at least one whole line of barges.  Then the dredge starts moving upstream too and we were squeezed between the dredge and the tow.  In hind sight I guess I should have stayed back further but didn't think the dredge would start to move.  We made it but there was a whole audience of people on the dredge (suit looking types with hardhats) watching wide eyed as we went by.  Sorry no time for pictures I was busy!! Lesson learned cheaply.

We were looking for a place to anchor for the night and most people seem to have an aversion to anchoring in the Mississippi.  We found a spot between two wing dams near a beach and out of the way of the tows and out of the big current of the river.  So far I'm very happy with it and we took Abby for a walk via dingy on the beach.  Shrimp for dinner tonight and a nice shower to go with my Mount Gay and Coke.  Life is good.  I found a special on oil for the boat and ordered 40 gallons of it along with 7 oil filters, which I will pick up in Green Turtle Resort next week.

Our Anchorage for the night

Close to shore but protected from the tows

Chicago to Joliet IL 9/18/17

If I haven't said so already we really enjoyed Chicago and would love to go back.  There were lots of Loopers there and everyone was excited about heading off down the rivers.  One gentleman we spoke to, who had done the Loop two years ago went as far as to say that the rivers were the best part because you get to spend so much time with the other loopers because you are all going to the same places.

Flotilla heading into the lock

 We started off on slightly different routes than some of the loopers.   We are unable to get through downtown Chicago because there are bridges that are lower than we are.  So we had to take the Calumet River which is about 8 miles south of Chicago.  It is a very industrial canal with lots of steel, cement, scrap and other industrial yards.  It is also very narrow and the AIS (Automated Identification System) came in very handy with the tows calling us by name and advising us of their intentions or needs in order for us to safely pass.  I had heard that the AIS would be good and I'm very happy I went for the full transmit/receive unit. The other thing I first heard was the reference of one whistle/bell and two whistle passing.  This system is mostly used on the inland rivers and is a quick and easy way to make each others intentions known.  I'm sure we will be hearing much more of it.
We transited the O'Brien Lock and were lucky and did not have to wait.  After another 10 miles or so we rejoined the other route from Chicago and headed towards Joliet.  We went through the infamous Electric Fish Barrier that the Corp of Army Engineers dreamed up to try to prevent the Asian carp from entering the great lakes.  I don't know if it works or not but we were not getting in the water to find out.  By the looks of the water I'm surprised any fish live here!!

We joined about 8 other Looper boats on the free wall at Joliet, that had free docking with electricity.  This is a big plus because it allows us to run AC all night and not have to run the generator to be cool. Its been hot!

Alton to Kaskaskia Lock 9/24/17

We left Alton at 7:30 after calling ahead to the lock.  Matt at the lock advised us that they would take us right away and we should head on down.  The Detroit Diesels in the boat are so loud that they will wake up everyone and there is no sneaking out of anywhere when they are running.  We untied everything and started up the engines as the last thing to leave. We went straight into the locks with two other loopers, Resolute and Liberty Ship. The next lock was the Chain of Rocks which has double chambers and we were locked down in the smaller chamber right away. After all the horror stories we have heard we feel very lucky to be breezing through the locks with no waiting.  I hope I didn't just jinx ourselves.....

Something else is it's hot out here.  Summer finally arrived after not needing AC in Canada for just about the whole summer it's 90 degrees here and hasn't rained now for almost two weeks.  I think it will cool off next week which is OK with me.

We went through St Louis today.  The Arch

The Mel Price Lock.  Our first lock on the Mississippi

Chain of Rocks canal.  If you stay in the Mississippi here you will be on the rocks!

Later in the afternoon we passed Hoppie's and kept on going.  Everyone knows of Hoppie's but since it was early and we didn't need fuel or anything we kept on going to Kaskaskia Lock where there is a free wall to tie to.  Hoppie's is nothing more than a couple of old barges tied to the shore with no wake protection and no services for $1.25 a foot a night.  Kaskaskia is much nicer, no wakes or current and FREE.  We ran the AC until we went to bed and were comfortable through the night with the boat closed up.

Hoppie's in Fenton MO

Ottawa to Peoria 9/20/17

We left Ottawa with the other three boats that joined us last night, and had a long day of travelling and getting into Peoria around 5:30 PM.  There is a town dock with lots of places to tie up but no cleats.  It's pretty weird that they built such nice docks and then never installed cleats.  We ended up tying to a jib crane and two power pedestals that didn't work, but held us in place for the night.  The replica sailing vessels Nina and Pinta were tied up at the town dock too and they were charging people to take tours. We mailed off the oil samples from the oil change I did the other night in Joliet and called it a day

The Nina and the Pinta were in town for tours but alas no Christopher Columbus in sight

Live size model of a huge mining truck that can do 42 miles an hour while carrying 400 tonnes of material at the Cat museum. There is a theater inside the box of the truck with 4D effects.  The seats and floors rumble as they show you the film

Peoria to Devil's Elbow 9/21/17

In the morning Debbie took Abby for a walk and then we had breakfast onboard with some thick sliced pepper bacon we bought at Marianos Italian Grocery in Chicago.   It was pretty good too. After that it was off to the Cat museum for the tour. I put most of the pictures in yesterdays blog so today's will be short. We got away from the dock around lunchtime and had lunch underway as we tried to catch up to the pack which had passed us by as we visited the museum. We looked for a place to anchor and the recommended anchorages were too far for us to get to before dark so we pulled off the main channel and anchored in deep water outside of the channel.  The funny thing was the water was deeper outside the channel than in it. We left lots of lights on and the AIS along with the anchor light so we wouldn't get run over by a tow.  The AIS sends information about your boat and your position to other boats coming by.  All of the tows use it and we felt safe that we would be seen on the AIS and also by the captains looking out the window.  We were not in the channel.

Big Mining truck and some of the original Best and Holt tractors that became Caterpillar

Joliet to Ottawa IL 9/19/17

Last night I drained all of the oil from both engines and transmissions.  I was able to refill all four units but decided to wait until this morning to tackle changing the oil filters, because its hot down there after running all day.  Debbie helped me and we got the filters changed and reinstalled before breakfast and then Abby and Debbie went out for a morning walk and I rode my bike around town.
We got underway around 9:30 with two other boats Wrangler and Darwin and headed to the locks.

Next was the Lockport lock and then the Brandon Road lock.  All went well for us with no waiting, and we felt fortunate to have made the last lock when we did, because the boats behind us had to wait for two tows to lock up and they arrived in Ottawa three hours after us. We tied up to the free dock wall in Ottawa and Debbie walked off to take Abby and get some milk.  She also found a park with a statue of Lincoln and Douglas who famously debated here in the elections of the past.

While Debbie walked I ended up with the locals wanting to know all about our trip and telling us about Ottawa.  Debbie always said I attract the crazies.

Lincoln and Douglas  Quite the size difference1

The lock wall at Joliet.  Wrangler and Darwin behind

A big tow coming slowly out of the lock.

The other three boats showed up and we helped them get tied up and let one of them, Robin's Nest raft to us as there wasn't enough dock space for all of us.  The nice thing was they also had free electricity for all of us so we had air conditioning all night.

Devil's Elbow to Mel's Diner 9/22/17

Sometimes the water gets very high here.  Those houses are at least two stories in the air.

 We slept well anchored out here on the Illinois at Devil's Elbow.  Probably 5-6 tows went by through the night.  They don't put out much wake as they are pretty slow moving but they run 24 hours a day with multiple crew and huge searchlights to see at night.  Almost none of the marks are lit and they drive by the light of the search lights.  You can usually feel or hear them coming before you see them.  They have many thousands of horsepower pushing huge tows.

Almost first thing we met up with a dredge setting up to do some dredging and passed by them slowly.  We had heard that the river was closed at mile 77 about another 20 miles downstream for here for dredging and we might not be able to get through for a few days.  As we neared  mile 77 we could hear on Channel 13 all of the tows discussing the closure.  We passed about 13 tows with the barges pushed into the bank and the engines idling to keep them in place.  Kinda how you park one of these monsters on the side of the river.  The crews were out doing maintenance and painting waiting for the dredge to finish its work because they weren't going anywhere.   We figured we wouldn't get past LaGrange lock just above mile 77 but when we called they told us to come on over and they would lock us through right away.  The lock guys looked bored and they all came over to chat and ask about our trip, Abby and the motorcycle.  We came out the other side and slowly went past all of the dredging equipment including a barge that was marked Accommodations and had probably 20 or more Motel like rooms for all of the personnel. After we passed the dredge there were at least another 15 barges waiting to go upstream.  Supposedly this would take a day or so to clear the backlog.  We felt very lucky not to be stuck in the backlog.

We were the second boat to tie up at Mel's for the night joining Thistle and then later Act III,  Sandrobber and Loofah.

We all went to dinner at Mel's and enjoyed the house specialty beef brisket.  They are also known for their desserts and all of us tried some kind of pie.  There were about 15 choices all made in house.

The dredge working on the Channel

The Dredge hard at work

Another picture of Mel's.  The restaurant flooded in 1994 then burnt down two years ago.  But they came back and were busy tonight

The water is low in the Illinois River

Tough to tie your boat up here

13 Loopers in the lock