Sea Pal's crew is closing in on the end of her recent adventure. The boat is out of the water and will be at her home port in Bend,Or. in two days !!!!,
It is a very bittersweet time for her crew who are anxious to get home but have had the time of their live's the last four months traveling The Great Loop.
We will reminisce with you a little on where we've been since our last post.
We picked a perfect morning to cross Lake Michigan from South Haven to Chicago. You never know until you venture out there if the weather/water conditions will be as forecast, as we found out crossing Lake Ontario earlier in the trip. Our crossing was most pleasant and swift -- 70 miles in just about 3 hrs. Very exciting when we got our first glimpse of the Chicago skyline.
We stayed three nights at the Burnham Marina which is the closest one to the museum campus. It was very hot and muggy and experienced 4 storms while there but boy did we have a good time and cram a lot in our 3 days. Chicago has done such a great job of highlighting their waterfront and making it accessible for everyone to appreciate. We did three museums -- the Field Museum of Natural History (our favorite), the aquarium and the planetarium. We walked & walked & walked -- down to Millennium Park to see all that it had to offer, walked Michigan Avenue & ate at an outdoor cafe where the locals "hang" on Friday nights. Took the bus to the Magnificent Mile and people watched. Couldn't go to Grant Park as it was closed off for Loolapalooza. A weekend long music event that headlines 20 bands and draws 90,000 people !!!! It added to the Chicago experience for us.
We left Chicago on a Monday morning and took the scenic route on the Chicago River right through the downtown!!! What a unique perspective of that great old and new architecture. One of the highlights of our trip.
So began our southerly cruise down the rivers. The Chicago River met up with the Illinois shortly after leaving The Windy City. This was our first encounter with serious commercial traffic. Thus the start of our love hate relationship with the tows. They are completely fascinating to look at and to listen to the " cap's" bantering back & forth on the radio. But these babies are huge with always at least 3 barges abreast ( often 5 !!) and always at least 5 barges long. So a minimum of 15 barges to a tow. When they go up the Mississippi they move some serious water. Their prop wash quickly becomes a prop scouring with waves easily 6 ft. high and very close together. Sea Pal learned quickly how to negotiate but usually not without a little colorful language to help relieve the stress of the moment. These tows
are to be respected at all times.
One particularly challenging event occurred at lock 52 on the Ohio River
four miles before Paducah. Waiting at a lock on the rivers is a normal occurrence and this day was no exception --- well,yes, maybe it was. The two hour wait we were told by the lock master to expect turned into four and that was just to get in the lock. We were in the lock with part of a tow ( they often have to break up the barges because they won't all fit in at one time) and apparently it was having some kind of issues getting tied up. We were in the lock probably an hour before the lock started doing it's business -- very unusual in our experience. It also was unusual in our experience to run totally in the dark. Which is exactly what happened when we got out of that lock. Blackness everywhere. Heavy cloud cover and no moon. Barge lights everywhere to try and make sense of. It took over an hour but we felt our way those four miles to a public dock in Paducah --- no matter that our cruising guide said you could only use it for 15 minutes while launching. Who is launching at 10 p.m. anyway!!! We left early before the dock police showed up. The First Mate would have had lots to tell them though as she was sure that she observed drug deals going on through the night as autos met up for brief meetings down by the waterfront !!! Never a dull moment.
There's a million things we are leaving out. But we did do St. Louis and the Gateway Arch. Impressive. So fast forward. By the time we got to the very beginning of the Tombigbee Waterway Hurricane Irene was really getting our attention. Enough so that we rented a car and drove almost 1,000 miles down to get our truck and trailer in Chesapeaske, Va. which is near Norfolk. We felt fortunate that we were able to go and remove our valuables from harm's way. Many were not as lucky.
We brought them back to northern Mississippi and did some fancy maneuvers to get Sea Pal down to Columbus, Ms. on the water & got the wheeled vehicles reunited with her there. We took her out of the water at noon last Friday with a lot of mixed feelings.
What a wonderful adventure we have had these last four months. We've traveled 3,050 miles on the water in 12 states, plus Canada and Lakes Ontario, Huron & Michigan. We've met so many great people. Many are other boaters, but the most special to us have been the people we've met who actually have lived a long the way.
North America seems much smaller to us now and we feel more connected to it. Watching the news and weather reports will have a different significance to us. For this we feel very grateful.
Signing off from Rock Springs, Wy. Tomorrow night Wallmart in Sweet Home, Idaho then home !!
Bob and Betsy
I see no pictures in your album. Remember, they're worth a thousand typos :wink: Send me an address along the way and I'll send you a camera!! :lol: 