September 3-4, 2019 – On the river system, they aren’t exactly set up with a plentiful array of marinas with facilities for big boats, and sometimes the decent anchorages are few and far between. And even some of those are no good if the river level is down (and boy, do they go up and down – we have seen some evidence of where the water gets to during flood stage, and its mind-blowing.)
So, sometimes the places that you can tie up that have been found by prior generations of Loopers are, shall we say, somewhat ‘colorful’.
Take, for example, Beardstown, IL, where a tug service lets transient boats tie up to a couple of their work barges out front. Nothing fancy (no pool, restrooms, boater’s lounge). No services (power, water, pumpout, wifi). Still, a dollar per foot.
We’ll take it!
When a second tug pulls up, right in front of The Lower Place, we ask if we can get a tour. ‘Sure’, and we go aboard for nearly an hour, talking to the Captain about his boat, and the river industry in general. These small tugs serve a ‘middleman role’, as he put it, moving barges around in this segment of the river, taking empties to the grain silos to be loaded, shuffling them once full into the tow packages that the bigger tows will take up or down the river. They sometimes help the larger loads to maneuver, and if necessary, split their loads so that they can lock down in two back-to-back lifts if too large to fit in the lock chamber.
We walk down into town to eat lunch at a ‘bistro’ (meh), and later to a really good Mexican restaurant. There is a sizable Latino population here, servicing the packing plants, apparently, and we agreed the restaurant was among the best Mexican food we’d had anywhere.
The next morning we shoved off for the Lagrange Lock, and that’s when our luck on getting a quick and smooth lockage came to an end. There were multiple split loads to be locked ahead of us, so that was at least 2 up and down cycles each. In addition to the fact that they seemed to be locking very slowly, the lockmaster informed us that the lock was going to have to be shut down from 1pm to 5pm for some maintenance. Ughh!
As the morning dragged on, it wasn’t looking good. A few more Loopers came along, until there were 5 of us waiting. We had rafted onto The Lower Place, who had anchored, and another small boat (an open center-console) tied off on the other side. That boat was on a 60-day loop plan, so racing along with their big outboard engines kept them on a rapid pace, as long as they could find someplace to stop and fuel.
As we were sitting there, we watch as one of the tugs starts coming over, right toward us! He comes up about ten feet from the back of the boat, and the window opens up- it’s the Captain from the tug service – “Hi, I just came over to say good morning!” we chatted a few minutes and then he headed off to help an inbound tow. He promised to put in a good word for us with the lockmaster.
Ben flew the drone to get a birds-eye view of what was going on; you can see our buddy on the small tug helping to get the load positioned to enter the lock.
Finally, just before 12:30, we got the word that they’d be able to fit us through. Over a 5 hour wait (!), and about 6 hours travel still to do to make it to our next funky stop.
We pushed along and made it to Mel’s Riverdock Restaurant by about 6:30; a somewhat rickety metal dock, next to a restaurant that allowed free tie-ups to dine, or charged $25 to overnight. It served our needs, and once everyone (The Lower Place and Noren) was tied up, we went up to the restaurant for a very tasty meal. They were out of a few things, but we all managed to find something, and there was a lot of it!
Robin (The Lower Place) had brought with her a t-shirt quilt that she had made after their first Loop; it contained a shirt from Mel’s. She had promised them to show it if she ever came back, and here she was.
We went back in the morning for breakfast, and all heads turned as we non-regulars came in. We heard a lot of teasing at the next table about what color fishing lures to use, and whether a blue & white one worked as well as a white and blue one. There were a couple former Marines and we joined in the military conversation. It was fun, and the people were all very nice. We thanked the restaurant for allowing our stay and for the great food.
Meanwhile, the fog had burned off, and we were ready to head down to the end of the Illinois, and enter the Mississippi.