September 28: Havana, Illinois - south of Peoria

We stayed in Peoria last night - definitely the largest city since we have left Chicago. There was a Wal-mart across the river and lots of restaurants right on the waterfront - sort of like Cleveland's flats area. Hope Peoria's fares better. The docks were nice - a bit short but that still works. The pay machine was broken - but the guys had to verify it to be so! I took a quick snooze in the sun while Steve was checking out the area around the docks. Then he rode across the river and went to Wal-Mart to stock up on some needed kitchen/food items. These boats below were anchored (or on shore in some cases!) around the marina last night. It was a graveyard for old casino boats as they are no longer needed since land based casinos are now legal. When we first pulled in, I thought we really hit the jackpot with a casino boat right here in our marina! Amazingly enough there are tons of birds here (I say that because the water is very muddy and doesn't look terribly inviting. Blue herons, white pelicans (that like to be in flocks), eagles, buzzards and other assorted water birds. The navigable channel is almost always very narrow but the river and surrounding areas can become quite wide. Guess it provides enough food for everyone. Steve also spotted a coyote walking along the bank. We had to wait for the first lock this morning and thought it would be a good idea to hang on a barge that is just sitting there on the river, right? Wrong! One of the pushers came along and chased everyone off (there were 5 of us by the time he came over). Oops :-) What's that about asking forgiveness instead of permission? The barges continue to be very present. It's not bad when they are coming north as we are going south but when we catch up to one it's very hard to try to pass. You have to call to see if they want to pass you 1 whistle or 2 whistle (1: around their port side, 2: around their starboard side) and then zip past them. Right! We can go 9.5 around them while they seem to go about 8. Talk about 2 turtles trying to pass each other! And these things are BIG. Something tells me we may have stayed too long on this river - the water is going down. Our sailboat friends Surona and trawler Selah had to anchor out this evening as the water level coming into into the marina was not deep enough. We draw 3.5 - which is 1 fool less than Selah and 2 feet less than Surona. But not to worry - they are on their way in for happy hour and dinner in their dinghy's. There are 4 other boats here tonight who are moving on south. Guess we best get moving!