Good Morning, ex-Lake Michigan cruisers!!  We are leaving the Lake behind and venturing into the Western River System.  Exciting times ahead!

By the way, the Horseshoe Casino has a great buffet.  I loaded up on all the seafood I could find.  Excellent desserts to top off our meal.

Into the Calumet Harbor!  We are following Elizabear and Corsair today.  We are going to Joliet today.  We hope that with the three of us, the bridges and locks will be easier to contend with.  That means, the locks may accommodate three pleasure craft and let us lock down rather than just one at a time.  Makes sense to travel in a group.

The best photos are at night from the water.  Who cruises at night?  Maybe another time.

We cannot drive our boat through downtown Chicago because we are too tall.  We have to go around the city via the “Calumet-Saganashkee Channel” or affectionately called the “Cal-Sag Channel”.  This channel will link back up with the Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal farther downstream.  The Cal-Sag serves the barge traffic and is very industrial.  We expect to have to negotiate around a bunch of tows and bridges as we start our journey southward.  Eventually, the Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal will join the Des Plaines River that flows into the Illinois River.

Chicago should be called the city of bridges!  We will be going under a lot of bridges this morning.  Both car bridges as well as rail road bridges.

We could get under these with ease.  Still very intimidating with all the rusted steel overhead.

Just information regarding the “Locking Priorities” throughout the river system, we Recreational or Pleasure Crafts have the least priority regarding the locks.  We may have to wait for a tow/barges to transit the locks before we are allowed to go through.

More bridges!!  Although these two bridges look similar they aren’t the same one!

Barges, barges, and more barges.  Industrial area continues past the Des Plaines River junction.

Tow pushing a barge sideways to get the barges closer.  Pretty little boats!

Approaching the Asian Carp electric fence.  It is a half mile electric field that is used to help prevent the Asian Carp from entering the Great Lakes.  Asian Carp are an invasive species that would change ecosystem dramatically.  Asian Carp is the catch-all name for a number of carp species.  The carp were brought to the US in the 1970’s to help filter pond water in fish farms.  They got out and are a very adaptable species of fish.  Don’t dangle your toe in the water!!Boat engines scare the carp which in turn jump out of the water and into the back swim platforms and sun decks of many pleasure crafts.  We didn’t see any jump onto our boat as we slowly went through the barrier.

The clouds set in early in the afternoon.  There are 9 pleasure crafts bundled up at the Dresden Lock waiting for our lock through opportunity.  THEN it started raining.  The tow captain told the lock master that it would be fine with him for some of us to raft up to him and have the smaller trawlers raft up to the larger trawlers.  In this way, we could all go down the lock at the same time.  That was very nice of him!!  

 

We had another Nordic Tug rafting to us.  We all got down the lock amidst the drizzling rain.

Out of the lock and down the Illinois we passed under the final lift bridge to our stop for the night.  Joliet free-wall.  All 9 of us did a 180 degree turn to have our bow facing the current.  There were 10 boats all on the wall by the end of the day.  Luckily the rain stopped long enough for us to dock.

There is power at the concrete pedestals.  Very nice of the town to give us free power.  The wall, however, is quite crumbly in places.  Care must be made to step on / off the boat so you don’t slide into the water.   The first Loopers on the wall quickly helped the rest of us find a space and tie up.  A great bunch of Loopers to be sure!