Illinois River: Havana, IL to Bar Island Anchorage

Day: 85
NM Today: 31
NM Total: 1708
Locks Today: 0
Locks Total: 77

Today was an easy trip with no locks to deal with.  We left at 8:30 and arrived at our anchorage destination four hours later.  We once again traveled with Fryedaze.  At one point Dave called us on the VHF radio and told us to look over on the starboard side to see parent eagles and their three young eaglets.

Eagle Parent on left and 3 young on right
(click and zoom in for better view)

 Other than the excitement of the eagles, the scenery is rather repetitive with an occasional industrial site.  In other words, I found little to look at along the way.  I read my book on Kindle and I played my Alphabetty on my phone and looked up if Clark needed something.

Typical scenery along the river
(water, trees, and buoys)

We arrived at Bar Island just after noon.  I had made sandwiches just before arriving at the anchorage so as soon as we had dropped anchor, we enjoyed our picnic lunch on the fly bridge.

Bar Island on left - our anchorage for the night

I do not know if it was the sugar cookies I ate for dessert or the heat or the ennui of the boring ride, but I laid down on the bench seats on the fly bridge after lunch and fell asleep.  About an hour or two later I dragged myself to a sitting position.  I decided I needed to get out of the sun to avoid a sunburn, so I got up and went down below to get some orange juice to try to revive myself.

As I was drinking my OJ, I sat staring at the big comfy bed in the next room.  That did it.  After my juice I climbed into the bed and passed out yet again.  I woke up just about every hour, looked at my watch, said, "oh, it's an hour later", and then went back to sleep.  Clark finally told me at 5:30 that he was hungry, so I dragged myself out of the bed to make dinner.

I was so groggy that I felt like I had been drugged.  I was so tired even after sleeping more than four hours.  To cook dinner I had to get something out of the kitchen cupboard, so I sat on the floor to reach in there.  I swear it took me 5 minutes to get up the energy to stand up again.

I made the simplest dinner I could think of - steak, canned potatoes fried over, and leftover vegetables.  After the meal I finally started feeling like myself again, but still all I could think about was how long I needed to stay up before I could go to bed.  Clark was afraid I would be awake all night.  Hah!

Sunset at the Bar Island Anchorage

Since we knew we had a long day the next day with a wake up time of 6:00 a.m., we both went to bed early.  Yay!