The Mighty Mississippi

The Morning we head down the Mississippi

The Mississippi river is over 1700 miles long from Minneapolis to New Orleans.  We only did 218 of those miles but they were exciting. Exciting because there are so few places to pull over and stop due levees and wingdams and current.

This is a working river with a current of 3-4 knots on an average day so that you can make more miles per hour AND per gallon, which is always nice! The water is turbulent from wingdams and tows.  Wingdams are basically stone walls that run almost perpendicular to the river to prevent erosion of the banks and to push the water toward the center of the working channel. Watching your depth sounder, chart plotter, and the action of the water is imperative so that you are sure you are in the channel and not hitting one of these things that could be just under the surface!

 






One night we spent at the infamous HOPPIES Marine Service.  It is basically a barge anchored to the bank.  It has been there since 1934 and is a family business.  The day we arrived two anchors holding the barge had released!! I was glad that they were on top of it and that it had happened during the day! You go to Hoppies to get your Mississippi River advice from Fern. It is a must for tradition's sake.

Hoppies Marine Service

See red truck with cable holding barge!

The barge anchor excitement. Her shirt says "Real girls play in the dirt".

One night we actually anchored behind a wingdam (Fern's advice).  It was interesting bucking the current to get in there.  I let Geoff take the helm for that experience! You also have to be careful not to hit a shoal(and I would rather that Geoff hit it than me!), so local knowledge is very important. Caught on a shoal with your boat at an angle could fill her up quickly with that Mississippi river water with a terrible outcome!

Anchored behind the wingdam. Lots of logs and sludge swept into here from the current.

There are only two locks on this section of the Mississippi but we added a third.  The Kaskaskia.  A beautiful river off the Might One where we could tie off and take our bikes on an excursion through cornfields and soybean fields. It was nice to have a little relief from the excitement of the great Mississippi.

Kaskaskia Lock and Dam

 It is interesting to see the huge tows and their barges hauling limestone, benzene, liquid fertilizer, coal, sand and who knows what else. I love seeing the shapes and sizes of the different bridges, being swept by the turbulence of the Mighty Mississippi tows and wingdams, and meeting such nice and interesting people fulfilling their dreams.

Very Busy St. Louis.  Many barges to navigate around.

River of Bridges!

The Arch is so close to the water!

Ellie and Jim (70's) take their home-built 32foot plywood sailboat back to their home in Belize from their home-port of Bemidji, Minnesota

Sue and Bud start the Loop "When I'm 64..." from the Twin Cities, Minnesota

A Dutch couple moseying down the Mississippi in a home-built version of Joshua Slocum's "Spray"

So here I end this blog...................................................................................................

The Windy City

We spent almost two weeks in Chicago and it was a whirlwind visit.  Our first night and only night anchored out was a wild and crazy night, the only place to safely anchor overnight is right off Lake Shore Drive at Ohio St, so there we were for one of the most prolonged and spectacular lightning storms of the year. It was beautiful.

The next day we moved to the new marina, the 31st Street Marina, where we could enjoy half-priced dockage (two nights for the price of one), which is a wonderful deal in a city that isn't an inexpensive place to dock a boat.  Winnie and Jack joined us the second night there (they took the city elevated train from O'Hare, and walked the last 14 blocks pulling their wheeled luggage- from 35th Street to the Marina- after dark, arriving at the marina about 10 pm.  Brave, those two!)

All four of us stayed on the boat Friday and Saturday nights, joined on Saturday by Sister Ellen and her husband Jeff (they live in Big Rock, IL) .  Sunday Patty and I met four boating friends (who we first met on Lake Champlain in June) for lunch at an elegant little pub on Michigan Ave, I had a wonderful micro-brew at the pub that was brewed in Warrenville, not 6 blocks from where I grew up!  Then we boarded the train and sped NW to visit with Vince and Suzanne (friends from Geoff's sojourn attending the Universtiy of Illinois at Champaign)  in Barrington Sunday and Monday  (with a mid-day side-trip to McHenry on Monday to visit Tom and Cindy Gruebnau and their son John-  Geoff worked for Tom before he married Patty. This visit was ONE of the highlights of our trip.  We hope to see those two again some time soon).

Then We spent two nights with Dave and Carol in Brookfield, where we relaxed and walked around the suburb of LaGrange and enjoyed the switch from boat to dry land.

On Wednesday, our friend Shannon Deckwar flew into O'Hare, where we met her, and then the three of us went to meet friends at Irish Eyes, the very bar where Patty and Geoff met some 32 years ago on a wild St Patrick's Day.

Friday we had a bunch of folks visit us on Osprey:

Tim Cosgrove (crew-member from Granfalloon trip in 1978) and Carol Spencer 

Shannon and Patty on our evening cruise of the city

Bernie Spencer and Jack Vitacco having a Sicilian "face-off".

Winnie and Uncle Bob Dawson enjoying a day "on the Lake"

Geoff receiving some much needed coaching from Captain "Uncle Bob"

 And then we headed over to DUE's Pizza for some spectacular pan pizza......

Geoff, Bob, and Winnie

                                                                 

We had a great time having Shannon with us in Chicago, she spent a total of 5 days and nights aboard, she and Patty had some nice outings in the City:

They went to the Billy Goat without Geoff, and tried to order French Fries !!!

Can you find Waldo's sidekicks, Patty and Shannon?

Biking along the Lake Shore

 But of course the fun had to end sometime, so early Monday morning found the OSPREY and intrepid crew heading down the Chicago River, waving to all the early morning commuters who are hurrying to work, and watching the city slowly slide by:

All of us were curious about the "carp barrier"

Winnie and Jack leaving OSPREY in Joliet after a full day on the "River"

Lake Michigan, Saugatuck and Chicago !

We spent almost an entire month exploring Lake Michigan along the eastern shore (The Michigan shoreline) and we wished we had the entire summer.  We started at Mackinac Island, then jumped to Beaver Island, then to Harbor Springs and Charlevoix, where we stayed for almost a week.  The water is crystal clear, but cold, and the swimming is spectacular.  We could not let a day go by without a swim, at least a brief one, in the beautiful waters of Lake Michigan or Lake Charlevoix.

It was at Charlevoix where Vince and Dave came to visit with Geoff while Patty was away visiting with her cousins in Minneapolis, we stayed at the city marina in Charlevoix (the first time on the trip where we stayed more than two consecutive nights at the same marina) and thoroughly enjoyed the quaint town. If you like fudge and ice cream, this is the town for you.

When we left Charlevoix, we headed to what could be the best stop of the trip at South Manitou Island.  The island has no dock or marina, so the only way to visit required anchoring in a spot that is magnificent, a beautiful crescent sand beach, clear clean water, birds wheeling overhead, and we shared with just a few other like minded boaters.  Heaven.  The swimming here was extra special.

 

Lighthouse on North Manitou Island

View from the top of the lighthouse

 When we left South Manitou, we headed south along the coast, visiting in turn Frankfort (where we saw the results of a fishing tournament- more Chinook salmon being cleaned than we could count), Arcadia (wonderful anchorage all to ourselves and a short row and walk to a deserted Lake Michigan swim), Portage Lake (anchored alone on a quiet cottage filled lake), and Manistee (where we had a wonderful night at anchor, then another evening tied to the seawall right in town, where we had a a superb fish fry- perch and walleye- at the adjoining Elks Club.

Dave and Carol joined us in Manistee for the Labor Day weekend, after leaving Manistee we stopped at Ludington for the night (home of the BADGER, the coal-fired car ferry that makes several trips a day across the Lake to Manitowac WI) and then on to Pentwater.

Dave, Carol, Patty and Geoff in Manistee

Pentwater is a very cute Michigan beach town and we spent two nights there after Dave and Carol left us, we visited with Winnie's long time friend Leslie..............

Leslie hamming it up for the camera in Pentwater

The next stop down the coast was White Lake, where we visited the towns of Montague and Whitehall, and their claim to fame...The world's largest weather-vane:

We then spent two nights at Muskegon and had a salmon BBQ with our friends Warren and Marty, sailors we met way up in The North Channel of Lake Huron, and Geoff had time to tour the nearby WWII submarine museum all by himself, which had an actual fleet submarine open for inspection.  Then one night in Port Sheldon (a great little anchorage- which we shared with one other boat- that boasts nothing more than it is off the beaten path.  The small lake is the source of cooling water for the nearby coal-fired electrical generation plant, so although there is incessant background noise from the plant, the lake is constantly refreshed with a daily flow of over one million gallons of cool, clear Lake Michigan water.  Very pretty and wonderful swimming.)

Next stop SAUGATUCK..............

We stayed a week in Saugatuck and had a wonderful time.  We visited the church where we married 29 years ago:

 

 On to the reception:

And then a few of our old haunts:

We spent time with Cousin Tom Dawson and his lovely wife Merrily over in Fennville. Tommy spent many years with the Chicago Fire Dept as a firefighter, but his Italian heritage gave him the background as a fantastic cook (duties he performed in the firehouse for most of his firefighting career), so they treated us to some fantastic meals, plus a real bed on dry land!  They also arranged a visit with Uncle Bob Dawson from Chicago, the person that introduced Geoff to boating on Lake Michigan as a youngster. 

It was sad to leave Saugatuck, but the next leg of the journey was calling, we turned our bow towards Chicago.....well, not exactly straight to Chicago.  Lake Michigan was starting to respond to the Fall weather and the Southeast winds had the Lake bumpier than we liked, so we stayed close to the shore and hopped down to St Joe/ Benton Harbor the first night, then Michigan City IN the second night, which then gave us an uneventful ride of 40 miles across the lower end of the Lake, in a strong Southern breeze, to Chicago.

Geoff gave Patty a tour of the Chicago skyline and Burnham, Monroe, and DuSable harbors before anchoring off the Ohio St beach for the night.  We had front row seats to a spectacular lightning storm as the bolts of lightning and the thunder that followed each strike, rolled across the lakefront for hours.