Day 48 off to Peoria, IL

      We left the dock at Tall Timbers Marina this morning at 7:10 am and headed up the Illinois River to Peoria, Illinois.
 Today should be a relatively short day involving 42.3 miles, 1 lock, and 2 lift bridges, which are supposed to be in the up position, except when trains are coming.  The weather is another beautifully sunny day with the high at Peoria forecast to be 73F with scattered clouds. We plan on staying at the free municipal dock, which is in downtown Peoria within walking distance of several restaurants.  The lift bridge (photo at right) is in Pekin, Illinois. It is so similar to several of the last railroad bridges that I had to check to make sure that it had not been misfiled here. Luckily, both of the lift bridges today were in the up position so we had no waits for trains to cross.

      Pekin is a bustling little town, and it is also ideally situated in corn growing country. Thus, it was not surprising to find an ethanol plant. There were also grain shipping terminals. Towns like Pekin are ideally situated with road, rail and river transportation and have obviously benefitted from that. There were many towns in this country in the 1850s that died when a railroad chose to go through an adjacent town, and these same railroad towns continue to see the benefits of the transportation infrastructure.

      Our one lock for today is the Peoria Lock and Dam. Once again the water was high enough that the wickets were down, and as before, there is a Corps of Engineers barge and tow boat in the empty lock chamber. They seem to leave all the gates of the lock open when the wickets are up, but they leave the barge and tow boat inside to keep boaters from accidentally (?) using the lock to transit. Similar to the dam yesterday, the water was about 11 feet deep and flowing smoothly over the dam. With the generally low current and favorable bridges and lock we have been making excellent time up river today.

      Also, as we approached Peoria, we passed our second ethanol plant for the day. I understand the reasons for putting ethanol in the unleaded gasoline, but I really do not like how it effects the performance of small outboard engines in particular. However, I can also appreciate how important it has been to portions of the Midwest economy. Increased employment and better prices for corn are bound to be popular, especially with the politicians who can claim to have helped secure these benefits for their constituents...

     Once again, a sure sign that we are getting close to a larger city is a power plant where most of the power lines go in a single direction (i.e. toward the city). In the foreground on the left is a coal unloading dock, and the big covered structure appears to be for coal storage.

      We arrived this afternoon around 1:30 pm, and we are right downtown in front of Joe's Crab Shack. It is a nice floating dock and is free, including electric. What a bargain! When the Admiral called for permission to dock, they did say that one of the reasons that it was free was in the hope that we would visit local restaurants...  We have no problem with that since we had already planned on doing just that anyway. In fact in the photo at the left the Admiral has that "hurry up I'm hungry" look in her eyes.

     We did walk around downtown a bit before heading to a very nice Texas style B-B-Q restaurant for dinner. On the way to the restaurant one of the most spectacular sights was the art museum, which has a delightful outdoor gallery as well. We both shared a salad, and we each had a baked potato with pulled pork on it. A little touch of home every now and then is a good thing...

     On the way back to Lucky Us we passed the Spirit of Peoria back at her dock on the waterfront.  The area along the waterfront has a nice walkway, parking garages, restaurants, etc. It definitely was a nice spot to stay and to visit. While I was listing amenities I forgot to add that they also have a nice ice cream shop not that I would ever have anything so unhealthy as a double scoop cup of vanilla ice cream... We had not stopped in Peoria on our last Loop, but we definitely would stop here again. Well, once again it is time to do the engine room check and hit the sack "early", which in reality means before Jimmy Fallon has been on for too long.