We began our trip down the Illinois River. It was a mile to the mouth of the river, and we followed a cargo ship into the channel. We thought we would have to following it for miles, but we were able to pass it before the 6th bridge.
This river was full of bridges. We had to travel under 50 bridges today and 2 locks. There was a lot of barges and industry along the river at the beginning.
Once past the O’Brian Lock the river was more park like for awhile. There were marinas and boat clubs.
We tried to have Chad take photos of our boat, but he had to go out on a call so was not able to meet us at his ramp docks.
We pass through the Sanitary canal which is a place where many barges are stored and moved around by tugs. The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal was constructed to connect the Chicago River with the Des Plains River and was completed in 1900. We saw that the walls on the canal were made of what appears like hand laid stone. We met two tugs, who were sideways pushing barges into place and we had to wait until they cleared the way to pass because this part of the river was very narrow.
This area had many barges lined up and you had to be careful for on coming traffic because the canal is very narrow.
At the end of the canal is an Aquatic Barrier that has electric pumped into the water to prevent any invasive species of fish from getting into Lake Michigan. We could only have one boat at a time go through the .6 mile section.
We ended up at Lockport Lock which was 4 miles from our destination for the day at 3:50PM however we had to wait for three barges to travel the lock first. We waited 3 hours before they allowed us to enter the lock with the third barge. It was dark when we landed at the Wall in Joliet at 8:00 PM.
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