TRIP 3 SUMMARY
Chicago, IL Area to Alton, IL
August 30 – September 5, 1997

     On August 30, the crew of ILLUSIONS, David  and Angela Magill, and our friend, Wally Moore, flew to Chicago, IL and drove to Grand Haven, MI.  The 1995 Carver we bought in CT had been left there since August 12.  The Carver dealer said they could fix or repair several things that had been wrong since the survey.  Some of them were fixed; some were worse.  It took all day to get there, pick up a loaner car, turn in the rental at the airport in Grand Rapids, buy fuel for both vehicles, buy groceries and dinner, and load the boat.

     Sunday was windy with some rain.  We went down the coast to see the lighthouse at Holland, MI and to take the measure of the lake.  If the lake was rough, we would have stayed near the coast around the lake.  If the lake looked okay, we would cut across the lake to Chicago, which is what we did.

     We got into the Chicago area about 3pm, and most of the boats in the area were out on the lake—a beautiful day, the last summer weekend, and all that.  For the next couple of hours we went through the Chicago lock, down the Chicago River (not far because of low bridges), saw the downtown buildings from the river, got boarded by the US Coast Guard and inspected (we passed), and back through the Chicago lock.  Then we went down the coast to the Hammond Marina.

     We fueled up, after some delays, and got our slip, after some delays.  Their practice, it seemed, was to rent out a slip that belonged to someone else who was out of the slip for the night.  Then we went to the Empress Casino next door for a buffet dinner.  Both the dinner and the marina were good; we’d recommend them.

     On Labor Day we went into the Calumet Harbor channel and made our way down the canal to the first lock.  That one kept the downstream water level the same as the downstream side of the Chicago lock, so the two streams could meet at the same level a few miles away.

     This area was very industrial with some similarities to the Houston Ship Channel.  There were steel mills, chemical plants, manufacturing plants, distribution businesses, and power plants.  Along the way were great piles of ore, coal, sand, gravel, and salt.  There were large conveyors to move these materials into and out of barges and on the shore.  There were a lot of railroad bridges and highway bridges, and most of them were low.  Most of them did not open, so we had our antennas down and prayed a lot.

     The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal is smaller than the Calumet channel where the two merge, and there were barges stored on both sides of the canal waiting for loading and unloading.  The tugs that were working had to work one at a time because there was not room for them to pass each other.  Also, we had to wait until a barge load was moved out of our way so we could get by.

     After 12 hours on the water, we had passed through 4 of the 8 locks on the river, with some delays.  We were also delayed by lot of water skiers on the lower portion of the river.  We spent the night at the Spring Brook Marina, which was nice.  The people there loaned us a car to go to town for groceries the next morning.

     The worst weather day was Tuesday, because it rained all day.  A cold front was passing through, which made Wednesday’s weather great.  We went through 2 more locks and had delays at both.  The locks operate to help these long tows get through in two stages, a “split load” they called it.  While this is going on, you usually have to wait, 1 or 2 hours seemed to be routine.

     We passed the Starved Rock State Park just downstream of the lock of the same name, and it looked very attractive because of the high cliffs of exposed rock right along the river.  We stopped at Eastport Marina in E Peoria, IL to buy fuel and to have a nice marina for the night.  Below Peoria it gets very rural.  Eastport was new; their restaurant wasn’t open yet.  Jonah’s was walking distance and good, so we had an early dinner and retired.  Angela and I had developed colds by this time.

     We made a long day of Wednesday because we wanted to make an anchorage at Mile 22.8 on the river—it was a nice one, too.  We had to go through the last 2 locks, and we had delays at both of them.  We saw abandoned lock chambers from long ago when the locks were constructed of stone, chiseled and shaped by stonemasons.  We observed the bridges were higher and put our antennas back up.  We observed levees and other indications of occasional flooding.  The river was almost devoid of any pleasure-boat facilities, but there were grain elevators and power plants.  The river got wider and greener as we approached the Mississippi River, 1000 to 1250 feet wide.

     On Thursday we made the easy run of 44 miles to Alton, IL and the Alton Marina.  This marina, like the one at Peoria, was run by Skipper Bud’s; and the people could not have been nicer.  They were great, really going the extra mile for the cruising boats and crews.

     We passed world-class scenery along the LDB (left descending bank) of the Mississippi River between its confluence with the Illinois River and Alton, consisting of high rock cliffs with some buildings at the ridges. We had lunch and dinner at the Alton Belle Casino, neither of which was anything like as nice as the meal we had at the Empress Casino in Hammond; but the casino was next door with a courtesy shuttle van.

      In the afternoon we changed oil and cleaned the boat in preparation for our return to Houston on Friday.  This trip brought our total miles to 2134 in 168.2 running hours.  It had been a great adventure!

     David Magill