Day 49 to Heritage Harbor Marina in Ottawa IL

      We left the city dock in Peoria this morning at 5:31 am.  The photo at right shows the sky just before sunrise while we are still at the dock. Wow, that is certainly early for the me, but my resistance is low at that hour!  We are moving on to Ottawa, IL which is 76.7 miles.  This will be around a 12 hour day +/- .  We plan on staying at the municipal dock in downtown Ottawa, but since it is the beginning of the weekend, we know we might have competition. So, the fall back plan will be staying at another marina like the Starved Rock Marina at Starved Rock State Park although that would involve some back tracking, and it is well outside of downtown with no possibility of a loaner car.

      The photo at the left is looking back at the Peoria city dock just after departure. The bright lights are security lighting in the waterfront area, and the downtown area is in the background. The stern wheeler Spirit of Peoria is docked just right of center in the photo at the left. The weather is clear with the promise of a great day on the water.

     We had to wait on the Starved Rock Lock. This was interesting because it is the first time we have  seen a barge sent through the lock without the tow (i.e. the barges). The tow was 3 barges or 600 feet long without the tow boat, which is the length of the lock.  The crew floated the barges out of the lock chamber and then tied them to the wall.  We then went past the barges and into the lock chamber to go up. In the photo at the right we are all the way up in the lock, and the picture is looking back at the barges tied to the wall below the lock. Thus, we locked threw before the tow could enter the lock after we exited to then lock down to pick up his barges. 

      We knew they often had to break down to lock through in stages, but we had never seen them send the barge by themselves.  The photo at the left was taken as we are exiting the lock as the towboat waits to enter. It was a complicated maneuver, but the experience of the Lockmaster and the crew was obvious.

      While we were in the lock I had some time to look around. When we are station keeping waiting for our turn to enter the lock as well as entering and leaving the lock, neither of us has much time to look around or take pictures. The photo at the right shows the rather long Starved Rock Dam with the adjustable gates on the right side.

      The picture at the left is also taken while we were coming up in the lock. The prominent rocky point is Starved Rock, and further to the right you can see a parking lot for visitors to Starved Rock State Park. The lodge and cabins are in the trees behind the parking lot. It really is quite a pretty area as seen from here.

      We arrived in Ottawa.  We stopped at the town dock just to read a sign saying they are closed due to renovations.  It was a little annoying that there were no evidence of any repair work actually being done... Instead of back tracking to Starved Rock State Park, we decided to go forward a few miles to a marina that we had tried to stay at last time we came through but they were full.  They had room for us now, so we went to Heritage Harbor Marina about 2 miles up river from downtown Ottawa where they also have a loaner car available for guests. 

      Heritage Harbor Marina is only 8 years old, and it is part of a multi-use development that includes condominiums, houses and what they call cottages. As we pulled into the channel leading into the large harbor, we passed some of the condos (photo at left). In a short distance the channel splits into two branches with one leading to the houses and the other leading to the marina (and cottages).

      The photo at the right shows the marina with the office, store and restaurant on the left. The photo was taken on one of the many long walks with Lucky. The complex has huge areas of nicely mowed grass with many little manmade hills so the walking with Lucky was easy and very pretty. There are some of the cottages on the far side of the harbor (one 2 story cottage shows up as bright white). The facilities, including a pool, are excellent, and we can see why it was full when we came past here on our last Loop. It is definitely worth a stop here.

      We also have had an eventful day in other ways.  We each had a nap this morning to catch up on our sleep.  While preparing lunch, the Admiral discovered we did not have water supply so she went into the engine room to switch to the front tank.  While there she noticed that we still had a half tank of water in the rear tank.  That means that the water pressure pump has probably gone out. These pumps run a lot keeping the water pressure at 50 psi. There is an expansion tank to keep the flow even, but anytime that water runs in any volume for a few seconds the pump will come on to build pressure back up.  When we got docked, we further diagnosed the situation, making sure it is the pump and not a power source problem or a filter issue. The marina believes we can get a pump from a service company just a mile down the road, and in the morning we can use the loaner car to go there. We finished off the day with an excellent dinner at the Red Dog Grill at the marina and a long 2+ mile walk with Lucky. I had a wonderful grilled Whitefish dinner, which I am hoping that will still be on the menu again tomorrow night! We will be staying here for 2 nights so that we can replace the pump and do some grocery shopping as well as... Stay tuned.