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September 21, 2012  Day 133     Grafton, IL          Total miles to date:  2758.5

We made some milestones today!  This was our longest travel day of 88.4 miles and we also completed the Illinois River when we arrived at Grafton Harbor which is mile marker “0”. 


We disturbed the pelicans!

The Marquette Hilltopper
3 wide and 5 deep!

Many  uprooted trees
along the Illinois River

We untied ourselves from the barge at Logsdon in Beardstown at 6:55 this morning and arrived in Grafton almost 10 hours later at 4:45 this afternoon. We encountered calm seas, clouds, sunshine, storms with thunder and lightning, gusty winds, light winds – in other words a little bit of everything!  We also passed several tow boats with barges today – the largest being three wide and five deep. 

Beach volleyball
on the Illinois River!

We had good luck again today at the LaGrange Lock – we entered with two other pleasure craft and didn't have to wait!


We saw many houses like this
on stilts - it does flood here -
but not this year!

There were three other Looper boats (The Zone, Took the Plunge, and Jet Stream) here today when we arrived and we were so exhausted we turned down an invitation to get together with them.  That must be a first!  We will do better tomorrow!  We had dinner in the restaurant at the marina as we were too tired to cook or go any farther. It was a good choice!

We will call Hoppies tomorrow and see when we can get in there. Until we know that we cannot make any plans to move down the Mississippi.