Days 111

Chicago IL - Joliet IL

• Start 6:23 AM
• End 2:00 PM
• Underway 5:04 Hours
• Distance 35 miles
• Total Miles on Trip 1860
• Av Speed 7 knots
• Locks 2
• Weather Sunny 75 Degrees

It was good to get underway again after 8 days, and the weather was perfect. Because we are off the lakes, and traveling on rivers the wind does not affect us as much. Now it only matters as we are coming into docks and locks.

We pulled off the dock with sunrise at 6:30am, hoping to get to Joliet early enough to get spot on the free wall. Well we can plan all we want but it is just a plan. To enter the Chicago River, we have to go thru the Chicago Lock. We were a little rusty going thru locks, we have not had been through a lock since early July. But it is just like riding a bike, once you do it, it comes right back to you. It helps that this lock only lowers you 4 feet.

Today's trip will take us down the Chicago River, Chicago Ship & Sanitary Canal, Des Plaines River, and the Illinois River. We will be going downstream the entire time. Location on the river system are identified by their mile marker and either LDB (Left Descending Bank) or RDB (Right Descending Bank) for example, we are going to the free wall at Joliet located at Mile 288 RDB. Mile 327 is the Chicago Lock, and Mile 0 is where the Illinois Water Way meets the Mississippi River.

Going through downtown on your own boat is a blast. The views were out of this world from 100 year old Art Deco buildings, Gothic Towers, modern-day skyscrapers, marinas under skyscrapers, to current construction. It was definitely worth taking the downtown route. (check out the timelapse video, on the video tab)

After passing through downtown, we came to our first obstacle. The Amtrak bridge. I called Amtrak the day before to see what the opening restrictions were. I was told to call when I got to the bridge and they would open within 10 minutes. What was supposed to be a 10 minute wait, ended up taking almost an hour. Typical government operation!

The next interesting thing we passed through was an electric fish barrier It is a 1200' long section of the canal that basically has an underwater electric fence. It is designed to keep the fish from passing it and is used to keep Asian Carp, and invasive species from getting into the Great Lakes.

The Illinois Waterway filled with commercial traffic, there are barges constantly running up and down it. There are also miles of barges tied off along the banks. It was cool watching them move the barges.

We also passed thru two locks, the Brandon Road Lock and the Lockport lock. All of the locks that we will be going thru until the Gulf of Mexico are federal locks, designed for commercial traffic. The smaller locks, are 150' wide by 600' long. The larger locks are 200' wide by 1200 feet long. Commercial traffic always have priority over PC (Pleasure Craft). This means sometimes we will have to wait to for them to lock through.

Even with these locks being much bigger than we are used to, they are much easier. They have floating bollards to tie off to. We only tie to one in the middle of the boat, and it holds us tight to the lock wall. In one lock, they had a boat raft off of us. Our first lock was a 45' drop.

Joliet, has a free wall with electric where we spent the night with six other loopers. There are rumors that in the past local hoodlums have untied boats from the wall. I think it is more of a friend knew someone that heard of someone….. To be on the safe side, we looped our lines through the cleats on the wall, and tied them off on the boat side. Also while we were having docktails, a sheriffs officer stopped by (Also a boater) and told us we were safe on the wall, and that the local PD patrols the area all night long.

While we were docked there were two guys "Magnet Fishing". They stand on the river's edge and toss a magnet on a line into the river, to see what they can find. They fished for at least 2 hours, and found all kinds of crap. Most of what they found they turn in as scrape metal.

Our next stop is going to be Heritage Harbor Marina, but we need to go thru three locks first.