Joliet IL

 I know I have some catching up to do so here is the short version.  We finally got a decent travel day to get down to Kenosha and arrived last Thursday.  My mom had deteriorated all week and I lost her early Friday morning, so we decided to stay in Kenosha for the weekend so I could re-group emotionally.  Daniel and Johanna both flew into Chicago for the weekend as a surprise and it was wonderful medicine having all 3 of my kids with me for a couple of days.

We talked, laughed, rode the streetcar, gathered sea glass on the beach, ate, drank and got lots of baby Ian time in as well.  Dan and Johanna stayed on the boat with us and they made the trip to Chicago with us on Sunday.  The weather was acceptable, but not great, and I’m sorry to say that Johanna did not have a fun trip….  The waves were 3 feet and close together and even I was cranky by the time we got off the lake.  Thank goodness it was our last day on any of the Great Lakes! We had time to walk to an outdoor restaurant before the kids took an Uber to O’Hare and flew home.

Our friends, Steve and Kathy arrived at the same marina about an hour behind us and we hadn’t seen them since the Erie Canal in July.  We visited and decided to stay another day before starting our river journey so we could travel together and I think Tom and I needed the added day to recover physically and emotionally from the week. So - Monday afternoon the 4 of us did a walking tour of downtown Chicago which included eating deep dish pizza at Pizzeria Uno (the original location where Chicago deep dish was developed), walking down Michigan Avenue, Starbucks Reserve Roastery, Water Tower Place and of course, the “bean” in Millennial Park. We put on a lot of miles, but had a very fun afternoon.

The day ended with docktails on their boat, a late bite to eat when we got back to ours, and an early bedtime. We left Chicago at 7:30 this morning and immediately went through the Chicago lock and went through downtown Chicago on the river.  Unfortunately, it was raining, so not as pretty as I had hoped for pictures, but still pretty darn impressive! On the way down here to Joliet we dodged several tugs and barges, went under about 50 bridges and ended up in a floatilla of 6 looper boats.

We had to wait 2 hours to enter the lock just before here and it took an hour to lock through.  There was a tug with 2 barges and all 6 boats had to raft onto the barge and then we dropped 40 feet.  The barge tenders were wonderful and made sure we all were secured but it was a nerve wracking way to go through a lock…

We are now tied up to the free wall in Joliet with a total of 13 looper boats and we met some great new people! The plan is to leave here at 7 am to head to the first of 3 locks and hope we don’t have to wait for hours to get through them. We have marina reservations in Ottawa IL tomorrow and will stay 2 nights so we can go to Walmart and stock up before we are in rural areas of the river.

There are such bad storms on Lake Michigan this week that no one can travel so I’m so glad to be done with it!!











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