Havana and Beardstown Sept 11

                     Outhouse on the dock at Havana

            After a long day down the river we ended up at a small town called Havana.  It was tough getting into this tiny marina as the entrance was narrow and reallyshallow.  The depth was only 4-6 feet deep.  If you weren’t looking for it you would have missed this marina on the river; but it had character! The restroom was an outhouse inside a tiki hut on the dock.  The “inside” of the outhouse was decorated with paper Chinese lanterns, tinsel, pink flamingoes, etc. it.  Definitely one of a kind! 

                     We now have flags on our bikes. We know how dorky this is, but it keeps us frrom being hit.  This is the bridge at Peoria.

  I keep thinking how fortunate we are  not doing this in a sailboat.  It is way too shallow everywhere.  We would have had to anchor out almost every night and then we would have missed visiting these towns.  We have not seen one sailboat doing the Loop yet.

            It is 95 degrees and really humid.  We are on a river and no one wants to go in the water!  The water is muddy brown, full of Asian Carp (we constantly see them jumping out of the water) and very polluted.  We were told by the waitress at dinner that the river water here was tested and had extremely high levels of carcinogenic stuff in it (there are lots of industrial plants along the river).

            When you are on shore the sound of insects humming is so loud it almost hurts your ears.  We were informed that they are “locusts”  in the trees.  They rub their legs together to make that sound.  Seriously, we have never heard anything like this.  At least they don’t bite you!       
                                                       

                                                 The Havana Marina                                                                  

            We had a nice dinner in town with our traveling friends.  Oh, by the way, we are now a “flotilla”.  That’s what the guys on the radio call themselves now.  Now we are 4 boats traveling together as another one has joined us.  It is a lot more fun, and safer, traveling in a group.  That’s one thing Bill and I are so surprised at.  On this trip we pictured ourselves on the boat doing things alone day after day.  It’s not that way at all.  In fact we are more social here than at home! 

            The mooring at Beardstown was really unique.  We  the other 3 boats we travel withand us) tied up to a working barge along with 2 giant tugboats.  This was the “only” place to tie up for another 66 miles. The barge and tugboat guys were still working with us in the middle of it.  They were extremely nice and friendly to us.  We ran the generator all night for the first time as there is no electricity (or air conditioning) without it.

                                            The barge where we tied up for the night

Lori handling the lines - Beardstown, Ilinois

            We went and visited the local bar in Beardstown and heard from the owner all about the town.  This place is really a company town as there is a pork processing plant here that employs 2,200 people (about everyone in town).    I learned that is takes 15 minutes to completely process a pig from the time it comes into the plant door until the meat goes into the refrigerator.  She gave us way too many details about this! She said that the pork processing plant was more sanitary than the beef processing plants as she had worked in both.  Apparently the local plant couldn’t get enough help so they imported workers – and the crime in town has skyrocketed.

It is Wednesday morning at 6:30 AM and we are leaving on our longest day yet.  88 miles and one lock to Grafton, IL where we plan to stay for a couple of nights.

                                The tug boats on the barge we tied up to - they are huge!