Through Chicago to Joliet

We left Monroe Harbor Thursday, Sept. 27 to begin our trek down the river. Beautiful day. There was another boat which left the harbor as we did-Swan Song- and we learned they were going our way. Next picture is the lock entrance and # 3 is one of them leaving the lock behind us.

Next shows us following Swan Song...we thought it wise to let them go ahead. If they made it under the bridges, so would we ! The lowest bridge was 17 ' and we cleared it just fine. In all, we would go under 33 bridges on the Chicago River which is 5.8 miles. It then connects to the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal where there were 19 more bridges in 16.4 miles.

It was pretty awsome to go through downtown on the river. There was surprisingly a lot of quiet spots with fountains, gardens tucked in along the water for people to sit.

This was our first tow encounter and at the time, it seemed pretty big to me. But this was small compared to the ones we'd meet and pass later....

Here we started to see more the more commercial part of Chicago... While we were waiting for this Amtrack Bridge to open, we watched these men doing tai-chi in the park. Here again were others just walking,enjoying the water.

Now this is in the industrialized part of Chicago.And finally, the confluence of the Sanitary Canal and the Cal-Sag waterway which is the route that boats higher than 17' have to take to get south of Chicago. That route I understand is not as scenic as going through downtown.

It got a little more industrial in this part of the Illinois River where there were more and more barges hauling salt, sand, and who knows what. We ended up following a cruiser being piloted by a delivery captain and he obviously had done this many times --he knew the language and lingo of the tow captains. This was quite an experience--pass on one whistle (the right) pass on 2 whistles (the left), sit tight, and let the tow maneuver, or don't pass now. At this point, there were 4 of us pleasure cruisers (5 counting the delivery captain). Here we are tied up to the bollards at the entrance to a lock. Sometimes we'd have to wait 30-45 minutes or up to 1/1/2 hours.
Here we are all going through Joliet, IL where there were a number of bridges that had to lift..and as we passed under one, the next one would open.
There was a long delay at the last lock that we were going to go through that day. So finally after a long and memorable day, we tied up to the wall here in Joliet for the night.