We were up early and left the dock at 6:40 am just as the sun was beginning to rise. Apparently, we didn’t break any ordinances that anyone was too concerned about last night since no one came by to ask any questions. Before leaving the area, we stopped by the spot we tried to anchor in last night to recover the end of our boat hook. Gale and Lucy took the dinghy into the shallow water while Maureen stayed aboard and kept Blue Heron in the channel. They found the hook right away, we secured the dinghy, and we were moving on down the river in no time at all.
The river was so shallow and there were so many sandbars in Peoria Lake, we saw thousands of pelicans gathered on the sand as well as flying over us in large flocks. It was a wondrous sight. It wasn’t long before we noticed two large cruisers heading in our direction. From a distance, it looked like our friends on Laura Lee and Get A Way. Sure enough, Gale hailed Laura Lee to find out what was “up.” They had gone all the way to Peoria the day before where diesel fuel was available but found that they could not get to the fuel dock because of the water depth. They were heading back to Chillicothe to Hamm’s Marina for fuel since there would be no other opportunities to buy diesel along the remaining 180 miles of the Illinois River. We were glad that we’d filled our tanks at the Starved Rock Marina even though we had been told that fuel would be about 50¢ per gallon cheaper in Peoria.
After a lovely day of relaxing cruising, we anchored behind Quiver Island near Havana, IL, at mile 121.3, just beyond the coal transfer plant at 5:30 pm.
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