Logsdon Tug Service

I don’t think I’m cut out for this river travel - too stressful for me and too much like tent camping which I don’t do… We had a 9 hour trip down the river today and at the end of it was more stress than I could handle. As I mentioned before, there are few places to tie up on this section and with lots and lots of looper boats traveling at the same time, it becomes a scrum in a hurry.

We had planned to tie up to a barge at the Logsdon Tug Service in Beardstown IL and there is room for 5 boats there.  It is first come, first serve, although we called several days ahead to let them know we were coming and they said, “no problem, come on down and we’ll make room for you”.  Ha!  Liar, liar pants on fire….

As we approached the area I could see on my google maps that there were other boats there and based upon the travel I had seen during the day I guessed they were the same boats we were with on the Joliet wall.  Thanks to trading boat cards, I messaged one of the boats and asked about room for 2 more boats and was told the barge was full.  There was literally nowhere else to go! The group was eating at a Mexican restaurant up the hill from the barge, and immediately offered to return to their boats and help us raft up to them so we could have a place to sleep. Lucky for us, this is the “looper way” and everyone goes the extra mile to help everyone else.  We rafted up to Dolce Vita and Steve and Kathy to Last Arrow.  Both couples we had met in Joliet and they couldn’t have been nicer.

We couldn’t get Madison off the boat because she would have to get onto the neighboring boat and then up on a barge, so we put out the mat we had bought for her to potty on and put it up on the bow.  After 15 hours, she finally peed on it and the next morning did her business right away with little coaxing. We hadn’t eaten a real lunch and I couldn’t get off the boat any better than Madison, so we thought we would turn on the generator so I could boil some pasta.  Well, the generator over heated and shut off several times and I couldn’t cook. We had to settle for some cheese and crackers I had in the frig and this is when I started to feel totally defeated…

The good news is that Tom and another guy helped me get off the boat onto the barge and we had drinks with everyone and it was very nice. We also strategized about tomorrow night since it will be another free dock at a restaurant.  Everyone agreed that we could raft up again and accommodate all of us.


                                       Boats on the wall as we left earlier than they did the next morning.


Comments

Jennifer Holsen said…
Wow! I’m jut amazed at your ability to adjust to extraordinary circumstances.
September 30, 2021 at 12:31 AM
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