Day: 82
Travel Time:
3.5 hours
NM Today: 27
NM Total:
1640
Locks today:
0
Locks Total:
76
Most loopers
stop at IVY, Illinois Valley Yacht club, in Peoria, Illinois, but through
talking with locals, Clark learned that local boaters stay at the Peoria town
dock for free, so he decided that would be today’s destination. As agreed the night before, we left at 8:00
and traveled down river with Fryedaze.
Along the
river we see a variety of birds – hawks, eagles, sea gulls, and herons. Today, off in the distance we saw a huge
flock of white birds, but we could not tell the species from the distance. Finally we got close enough to one of the
birds. Clark asked if it was a swan since it was very large and white. When I looked closely, I said, “No, I can’t believe I’m seeing it, but that is a
pelican”. Of course I grabbed my phone
and checked out pelicans in Wikipedia.
Apparently they travel in huge flocks.
As we traveled downstream in the Chillicothe area, we saw numerous, large flocks of pelicans.
 |
| Flock of Pelicans on Illinois River (only part of the flock is shown in the picture) |
Traveling
downstream, we passed through Upper Peoria Lake which was quite choppy due to
strong winds. Clark mentioned that if we
were still in Michigan, it would have been a “no go” type of day. Shortly thereafter, we waved farewell to Fryedaze who are staying at IVY for the
night. We agreed to touch base in the
morning regarding departure time as they will pass by us on their way to Peoria
Lock, and we can lock through together and continue our coordinated travels. We can call the lock from here to find out if
we should start on our way or hang out for a bit before leaving.
We found the
Peoria town docks shortly after the Interstate 74 bridge. Immediately I noticed a lot of road noise
from the trucks “overhead”. With the
salon door closed, however, it is hardly noticeable inside the boat. Docking was interesting as most docks here
are designed for a boat less than 28 feet long.
We measure 39’ bow-to-stern.
Luckily there are a few designated spots for larger vessels such as
ours.
We saw the
boxes indicating power availability along one long dock, so we headed for that
dock. I was still prepping my fenders
and lines when a strong wind pushed us over to the dock in a big hurry. I barely got my last fender down on the
starboard side before we hit the dock. I
figured the fender was more important than the lines as the wind would hold us
fast until we got lines tied. After we
landed, Clark jumped off the boat ready to help with lines, but when I looked
around, I said, “What do we tie to?” No
cleats or rings or any other hardware presented itself.
I looked
around some more and saw that another dock for larger boats did have hardware and pointed that
out to Clark. With the change of venue, I
had to move all my lines and fenders from starboard to port. As I worked that out, Clark rotated the boat
to position the bow into the wind. I was
never so thankful to have taken boating classes than I was today docking the
boat while fighting the wind. Clark took
multiple passes by the dock to get us in close enough. As soon as it got within my reach, I used the
boat hook to get a line around a dock cleat and tied at mid-ships. Once I got a wrap on the cleat I
yelled, “I have a mid!” whereby Clark ran down to help with getting on a stern
and bow line. In the pre-class days I
would have tried to “lasso” the cleat by heaving the line at it. Eventually the lasso approach succeeds, but
it usually takes multiple frustrating tries to get a hit especially fighting
the wind which typically blows the line in the wrong direction.
After getting
the boat secured, Clark went to check out the “marina rules” and talk to folks
about staying overnight when the posted signs clearly state it is not
allowed. I made lunch while he was gone,
and then I ate lunch while he was gone.
I started wondering where he had gotten to when he finally showed up
back at the boat with “the scoop”. As
before, he was told by locals to ignore the signs and not feed the meters at the pay stations
since they do not work. Once we were
both done with lunch, we went exploring Peoria.
The one
thing I had seen that caught my eye as of interest in Peoria is the Caterpillar
Visitor Center. Apparently that caught
Clark’s eye as well since we both made straight for that destination. Caterpillar has a multiple-building complex
plus a multi-level parking garage for its Peoria employees. The tour showing Caterpillar products is in a stand-alone building. We found the display educational and fun with videos and hands-on simulations.
I tried my hand at simulated ditch-digging to
fill in a pipe-filled ditch. I failed
miserably the first time as I only managed to lift the equipment up in the air (the cab - not the bucket) and move no dirt whatsoever. After
listening to the instructions twice more, I still only succeeded in moving no more
than a few spoonfuls of dirt at a time when the simulation told me to let someone
else have a turn. I wanted to stay for
more playing!
 |
| Caterpillar complex |
 |
| Clark standing next to tire of a mining truck built by Caterpillar Each tire weighs several thousand tons |
 |
| I decided to try driving a much smaller Cat |
 |
| Here I am using the simulator to fill the ditch - fail! |
After
spending an hour at the Caterpillar exhibits, we decided that we should at
least try to see more of Peoria. For some place to use as a destination, we decided to walk to a food market that showed up when we looked in Google Maps. What we saw from the bridge looked quite nice.
 |
| View of Peoria taken from bridge over highway |
However, as soon as we crossed over the bridge to get
to the store, I started to get a bad feeling.
Less than a half a block later, I told Clark that we were not in the
good part of town. We made an about face
and walked back over that bridge fast.
Since
groceries were not essential, we abandoned the food agenda item
completely. Instead of going directly back to the boat Clark took me to an ice cream store for a refreshing treat. On his earlier
explorations, he found an ice cream store selling hard ice cream. In my blog a couple of days ago, I mentioned
that he passed on the soft serve. After a quick sampling test, he got a “single
serve” waffle cone with both vanilla ice cream and raspberry sorbet. I got a strawberry / raspberry / orange juice
smoothie made from 100% real fruit. We
were both very happy!
After our
treat, I suggested we come back to the boat to relax. I worked on the blog, and he did travel
planning and read the Wall Street Journal on his iPad to find out what is new in the
world. It seems so easy to forget the
rest of the world exists as we float downstream. Every once in a while we need to look up and
see what is happening elsewhere. Watching television for the news has proven to be challenging as many places we get zero view-able stations. Certainly we had zero in our anchorage last night but also zero in the Ottawa marina since we could not be bothered to plug into their cable connection. Perhaps Peoria has digital television stations?!
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