Grafton, Illinois  - We’ve reached the Mississippi River!!!

            We made it!!!  We’ve reached the Mississippi river! We are 333 miles below Chicago.  After a very grueling 88 mile marathon, plus one lock, the flotilla made it here. It was a 9 1/2 hour trip.   We travel at 9 miles an hour.  Bill thinks we are getting about 2 miles to the gallon (can you believe that's good!). The weather was 95 degrees and extremely humid – the inside of our boat was 98 degrees.  It was an incredibly long trip and especially in that heat.

                                           The boat in front of "Starved Rock"

We hardly slept last night for 2 reasons:   1) The Asian Carp were hitting the bottom of the barge we were tied up to so loud and so often we couldn’t sleep – Yes this is for real, they eat the algae off it 2) We planned to leave at sunrise, which was out of our normal sleep pattern.  Also last night Mayflies attacked our boat.  We woke up with about a hundred of them on it.  Birds came in the morning and chased them away.

When we arrived at Grafton we all immediately jumped in their swimming pool and celebrated. Grafton is a cute little town.  We were so happy to be here that we are staying for 2 days.  We went to dinner at an old hotel that is supposedly haunted , great German food.

             Ruebel Hotel and Restaurant, supposedly haunted ,

rode our bikes here                                       

 

                    Celebrating our successful 88 mile day                                                     

            We’ve had lots of problems getting our mail.  Taylor sent our mail to Peoria.  However we got there before our mail did.  The Peoria post office said they would forward our mail on to Grafton.  They forgot to do it.  So Bill rented a car and drove the 3 hours back to Peoria to pick it up.  What a pain!!!!