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September 19, 2012  Day 131      Peoria, IL      Total miles to date:  2596.0

Let’s see – this is night #6 in Peoria!  The boat has been rocking all day long in 20 to 30 mph winds! No other boats showed up today but that is not a surprise. This would not have been a good day to be out on the water. 

We had a very nice offer from the staff that runs the Spirit of Peoria River Cruise Boat that is docked here. They brought their hoses down to our boat and filled our water tank! We were so grateful for that as we were getting very low on water.  Joyce also received a wonderful offer from college friends Cindy and Dave Brown to drive over from Bloomington-Normal to take her to WalMart. That was so appreciated.  One hour in WalMart was productive enough to fill the back of their SUV.  Many thanks to Cindy and Dave for taking time out of their busy day to take Joyce grocery shopping! It is nice to know there are many good people out there!!

Another full day with the diesel mechanic.  But, at 6:45 pm the starboard engine started and no white smoke appeared!  At 7:30 he wrapped up everything and called it a success.   Hooray!!

Joyce spent some time calling marinas this morning and planning the next few days. Other Loopers have made it into Tall Timbers Marina in Havana, IL but the owner told us that really don’t have enough depth for us and he would not advise stopping there. So that means a 74 mile trip to Beardstown where we will tie up to a barge at Logsdon Tug Service. There are no services there but we will be able to tie up for the night a $1/foot. It is a common stop for Loopers!  After that we will make another long trip to Grafton, IL which is a large, full service marina. Our first stop there will be at their fuel dock!

We have been waiting for news updates of Lock 27 by Granite City which was closed earlier this week. We have heard that it may be 7-10 days and we have heard it may be only one more day until it reopens. We like the latter idea! The tows with barges are backing up on the Illinois River as are the pleasure boats.  Even if we had gotten that far, we would be stopped there – so we were stopped in Peoria instead!