Brown Eyed Girl: At the End of the Illinois, Ready for the Mighty Mississippi

In the last post I said that we left Havanna and we would probably anchor out somewhere but we decided to keep running until we got to Hardin. I know you don't have a clue where these places are and frankly I don't either because I don't have a road map of Illinois. Basically, Havanna is in the middle of the state latitudinal and towards the Western side. Hardin is on the Western edge of Illinois and about 50 miles North of St. Louis. Hardin is a very small town but they have a semi famous restaurant that has a dock. We had called ahead and they said the dock was empty but when we got there it was full so we had to raft off which was fine. The place must be kind of known and have good food because Augie Busch has a helicopter fly there frequently from St. Louis to pick up brisket and pies. I was pretty excited about having a good meal with a good piece of lemon meringue pie. I had the brisket dinner with cole slaw and baked beans which was fantastic but they were out of lemon pie so I had pecan. I should have gotten the coconut cream but the pecan was good. We had cruised 99 miles and were pretty tired. Michael from Nova and I got back to boat in time to see the last half of the New England, Miami football game. Going slow (10 MPH) is bad enough but the scenery doesn't change very much so it was a pretty boring trip. I helped with the driving which gave Ginny a little break.

Since we were only going 20 miles on Tuesday to Grafton we didn't leave until about 9:00. We traveled with the boats we were rafted to so there were 6 boats in a caravan to Grafton. One of the boats (Dream Catcher) was going to cross their wake in Grafton so they were pretty excited. Crossing your wake means that you have returned to where you started the trip from. We are at Grafton Harbor Marina and it is really nice. Covered docks, swimming pool, fantastic bathrooms, a good ships store and a restaurant on site. We got in about 1:00 and were planning to stay over the next day. It was really hot so we didn't do too much on Tuesday. We were going to walk around town today but it has been pouring all day and it is cold. Ginny did get a ride to another Wal-Mart (our third one so far) in the courtesy car while I took care of some maintenance items (that's slang for I took a nap). Actually, we caught up on some boat chores, cleaning, and emailing. We are going to meet some of the other Loopers for dinner at the marina. We are planning on going down the Mississippi tomorrow to a famous Looper stop called Hoppies which is about 60 miles away. I am a little nervous about being on the river but I know we will be fine. The barges are much much bigger, there is a lot of debris in the water, there are concrete structures sticking out into the river and the current is strong. What's to be worried about. Hoppies is the last place to get fuel until we get to Green Turtle Bay which is about 250 miles and three different rivers away. If you are following the GPS tracks on this blog it looks like we are wandering around the country aimlessly but trust me there is water under those red lines.