Day 16: Thursday, September 20, 2012
Underway: 6:55 am Motor Off: 5:30 pm Miles Traveled: 45 Stayed At: Marina
First Things First: First happy hour; first “company” on Aurora.
Mile 258 to Mile 213: After a quiet night at the Timberlake “Marina” (we did not float away with the dock), we cruised downriver with much less wind and bright sunshine. What a difference a day makes. We passed the 600 mile mark at 9:13 am. We are starting to feel like we are making progress on our long journey.
One thing that you notice out here is the surprising number of airplanes flying over at any given time. We counted 15 contrails in the sky at one time from airplanes flying east, west, north and south. The central Mississippi River Valley is a major flyway for both birds and humans.
The Illinois River merges with the Mississippi River at Grafton Illinois. The only indication that it wasn’t just another slough or channel was the tow that turned right and went up the Illinois instead of continuing up the Mississippi channel. We are seeing a lot more tows as we get closer to St. Louis.
We officially started the Great Loop at Grafton – after travelling 600+ miles to get here. Less than one year from now, we will hopefully complete our circle by crossing our path at the Illinois and become Loopers. The adventure begins (officially).
We stopped in Grafton to get gas and stretch our legs. Aurora has now officially traveled up the Illinois River (for about a half mile). Grafton is a nice little town with everything we need – gas and honeycrisp apples – close to the river. We originally planned to anchor a little ways below Grafton but the potential anchorage turned out to be a stump field and pelican resting area – not a promising place to spend the night. We ended up going a little upstream and stayed at the courtesy dock for the Longshot Bar/My River Home Marina. I walked up to the bar to see where we should go for the night and was surprised to find that, of the 6 people in the bar, we knew two of them – Rob and Ann from Rumpshaker (check out their blog at therumpshaker.com). We thought they would have been well south of us but they decided to stop here to hang out for a day. Random chance strikes again. We spent a fun evening enjoying cheap tacos, beer and buffalo wings. Rob and Ann came back to our humble home for honeycrisp apples and caramel.
Wild Things: Running into someone we know at a random bar along the Mississippi River.
