On the Water with As You Wish: Sept 14 Chicago to Joliet

Sept 14

After day number one on the river system I am currently not a fan of this portion of the trip. It was a long day with arrival at our final destination – Joliet – in the dark. Thankfully the wall was already full of loopers awaiting the arrival of the group of 7 boats in our pack who went through the Lockport Lock together and were waiting to have us tie to them for the night. And so ended our 11 hour day to travel 50 miles.

A beautiful morning as we leave Chicago in our wake

It seemed to start well enough. We had a 10 mile run from Burnham Marina to the entrance of the Cal-Sag channel. Open water, light ripples, clear skies. But on our way we heard radio transmissions that the 106^th street bridge was stuck in the down position. With our air height over 18’ we needed for it to open to pass. We hoped it would be repaired by the time we arrived at it in 2 hours. In the meantime, we got held up at the first bridge where the bridgetender just seemed in no rush to open. After a ½ hour delay he finally let us pass.

No idea why , but this bridgetender took his time opening for us at the first bridge

Lots of commercial sites along the water here – industrial and lots more bridges. Most were at least high enough for us to pass unencumbered and the 106^th St. bridge was back operational before we got there. We reached the Norfolk Southern Bascule Bridge which was down for a train passing. Not sure what the lowered height is but after climbing on the sundeck roof and eyeing the top of our anchor light, Martha VERY slowly glided us under it with mere inches to spare.

Clearance under the lowest fixed bridge of the Loop - plenty of room to spare

A few nice hours of river travel on the outskirts of town before rejoining the actual Chicago River and another industrial section for loading, staging and unloading barges. We got blocked from our travels several times by tows coming down the channel. These seem monstrous to us where we’re used to seeing just a single or occasionally double barge being pushed down the ICW.

We hear they can be up to 4 wide and 6 long on the big rivers. So far most of these have been just 2 wide and 3 or 4 long. Still, that takes up a lot of space. Finally made it to Lockport Lock only to be informed they had a double tow coming up before we could go down. It would take several hours and we were directed to tie up to one of the large cribs off to the side.

Tied up and waiting... and waiting ...

After several hours of waiting and watching the process of loading and unloading a split apart tow, we finally entered the lock as darkness approached. Keep in mind we are on Central time here and it gets dark a bit earlier. When the lower gates finally opened, it was dark. Luckily just a few miles and 5 bridge openings and we were finally at Joliet with it's free wall along the city front for transient boaters. . The entire wall was filled so everyone had to raft up to one of the boats already there. Thankfully our fellow loopers were ready and waiting to assist our group on arrival.