Days 116-117

Valley City Anchorage - Grafton IL

• Start 7:00 AM
• End 12:45 PM
• Underway 5:45 Hours
• Distance 53 miles
• Total Miles on Trip 2110
• Av Speed 9.7 knots
• Locks 0
• Weather Mostly Cloudy, 72 Degrees, Wind 8Kn SSE

Today's trip was our last day on the Illinois River, when we leave Grafton Harbor we will be traveling on the Upper Mississippi River. As much as the Illinois River can be boring, there was lots of wild life. I could not count the number of Bald Eagles that we saw, Asian Carp jumping out of the water, birds along the banks, and even cattle wandering along the banks of the river. The other neat thing on the Illinois River, is that they still use car ferries to cross the river. We passed 4 ferry crossing coming down the river. We cannot wait to see what the Mighty Mississippi will bring.

The trip from Valley City to Grafton was only 53 miles, bringing us back to our 50 miles/5 hours of travel that we like to do. It was a nice change after the last couple of long days. It is also be nice to have water and electric on the dock again. (We really need to do laundry!)

The marina is amazing, the docks are all floating docks, including the office, store, pool and restaurant and design to handle water level changes of 30 feet. When the river floods they do not close the anything down, they just shuttle customers to the docks on a pontoon boat.

There are several restaurants and wineries in town, including one at the top of a mountain, with a chairlift from town to it. As with most of our luck the chairlift only runs on the weekends after Labor Day.

We did borrow the marina's courtesy car to go grocery shopping. The grocery store was 16 miles away and mostly up hill. There was no way to take the bikes. We are hoping to be able to ride at our next stop, Alton IL, 20 miles downriver. We have not had a chance to ride since we went back to New Jersey.

The best part of Grafton was, were met back up with mark & Karen (Kay Dee). They left Kay Dee here while they went home for a wedding. John & Carol (Anna Mae) were here, we have not seen them since New York.

We ended our stay here with docktails at the pool, with 8 or 9 other loopers.

Tomorrow Kay Dee and Nothing TO Plunder are heading to Alton Il.