Chicago, IL – Joliet, IL, September 2, 2008

We are now in the river system. There is no need to worry too much about high winds and rough seas. It is very nice to be traveling flat, with no rolling or fighting waves.

Our first lock was 5 minutes into our day, at the start of the Chicago River. It only lowered us about 2 feet and, as locks go, was one of the easiest ever. Cruising through downtown Chicago was very nice. The view was beautiful, there were riverside walks on either side of us, tall buildings, small parks and restaurants. It was very clean and very scenic.

We went under many bridges and only needed one in Chicago to open for us. That was a 10’ Amtrack bridge. We were fortunate that we only waited about 5 minutes for it to open.

After the excitement of going through downtown Chicago, the trip became a little boring and definitely not beautiful any longer. We went through a very heavy industrial area then into a narrow canal area with nothing to see except trees lining each side.

After we had been underway a few hours we caught up with 2 other boats. Passport and Footloose were both Loopers and we had remembered seeing the boats in other places. We traveled together the rest of the day.

Soon we met our first tow, several barges pushed by a towboat. Shortly after that we entered an apparent loading and unloading zone for barges. They were 2-3 deep along he side of the river, with towboats interspersed.

At our second lock of the day we had to wait about ½ hour. There was a tow, five barges long by two wide just finishing locking up and we had to wait until he got going again. It took another ½ hour for us to get locked down.

There is a free dock in downtown Joliet where all of us tied up. We got there at 3:15 p.m.

2 locks today - total of 77