Friday, September 4, 2009

We slept the best we had since Sunday night and woke to a glorious sunny morning. The boaters from the other three boats that came through the fish barrier yesterday were all talking about moving on down the river right away. At first we thought we might stay a day in Joliet, but then decided that we wanted to get a little further away from the industrial congestion and into the more rural areas of the river. We were hoping for some cleaner air, less barge traffic and nice scenery. We found it all downstream.

After a little walk through Bicentennial Park with Lucy, we left the wall at 9:40 am arriving at the Brandon Road Lock, Mile 286, at 10:00 am. Because of the commercial barge traffic, it wasn’t until noon that we were allowed into the lock chamber. We locked through with Reflection and afterwards we bid them safe travels as they powered up and left us in their wake. The afternoon was warm with temperatures reaching into the upper 80’s. We moved at a leisurely 4.5 knots with Maureen at the helm and Gale working on odd jobs around the boat. We were surprised to see the leaves beginning to change color! One tree was a brilliant red and we noticed a lot of yellow, red and orange mixed into the greenery. At one point we saw two deer in the river, a small buck and a doe. We also saw many white egrets, lots of blue herons, dragonflies galore and an immature bald eagle high up in a dead tree. Just before the Dresden Lock, Mile 272, we saw several very large brown sandhill cranes. According to our bird book, the brown sandhills are the immature birds while the grey ones are adults.

At 5:45 pm we dropped anchor on the west end of Sugar Island, Mile 260, which was noted as a good place to anchor in one of our guidebooks. The guidebook did indicate that we would have to share the spot with the waterskiers on the weekends. A couple stopped by in a power boat to offer assistance, but we assured them we were ok and just stopping here for the night. We dropped the dinghy and took Lucy to shore for a run where we watched all the recreational boat traffic speed up and down the channel and around the back side of the island. We weren’t worried about barges, but we were concerned about the Labor Day weekend power boaters and whether they would see us in time to adjust course. Back on Blue Heron as we were raising the dinghy on the davits, power boat Midnight Marauder came by. The captain wanted to tell us of a much better anchorage near Barry Island where we could duck back into a cut and we wouldn’t be bothered by any kind of boat traffic. He said it was only about ½ mile down the way. Well, if you’re on a fast power boat it probably seems like about ½ mile – actually, according to the chart, Barry Island was another 4 miles down. We pulled anchor and found the recommended spot which was already occupied by a large powerboat and a pontoon pulled up onto the small beach. There was plenty of room for everyone, so we dropped anchor again and settled in for a very quiet and restful night. Thank you, Midnight Marauder!