Hardin, IL


Starting to see pretty, tall bridges again (above). The photo below is of the old bridge being removed.

We were up and away from the barge at Beardstown as soon as we could confirm with the Lockmaster downstream that he could accommodate us.


Gotta love that muddy, brown water!



Great cruising conditions on the Illinois River.


We even had time for a selfie.


Remember what I said about debris in the water? That's a tree below.



Our next stop was Mel's Riverdock Restaurant in Hardin, Illinois (about 50 miles south of the barge at Beardstown). Again, no utility hook-ups but a pretty popular restaurant.



I had the catfish and Brent had the brisket. We took left-overs for both.



Here we are tied to the dock just below the restaurant.




We had a few visitors during the night that gave us a gentle rock. These are pictures of one of the barges that sailed past. Those barges operate 24/7. I guess a few logs and trees in the water don't bother them.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fort Myers Beach and Downtown Fort Myers

Image
Fort Myers Beach proved to be yet another popular destination as you can see from the pics.  You would think that the temperature was in the high 80s with all the people on the beach but on this day it was barely over 70 but that didn't seem to hinder the population.  Downtown Fort Myers, which is walkable from the marina, always seems to have something going on. On Friday they had a Music Walk and as we went from one performance to another we weren't sure if the performers just picked their own spot to set up or if it was organized.  They offered a wide variety that ranged from a 10 year old country singer to 65-75 year olds band with horns.  There was something for everyone!   
Read more

Making our lists and checking them twice

Image
As Brent and I pondered retirement, we wanted to be active and do something together.  We considered moving to a smaller house in a smaller city but that didn't spur any ideas of how we would fill our time. (For those of you who know me well, you know that I need to be busy most of the time.) We had always enjoyed being on the water and had owned boats for almost 20 years. So we decided that maybe living on a boat would be different yet, enjoyable.  We spent more than a year looking for the perfect live aboard boat with the idea of spending 6-12 months in one marina and then cruising on to another location. As we searched, we revisited an idea Brent had many years back.  He wanted to do the Great Loop.  In a weak moment, I agreed and then the type of boat we needed for The Loop changed drastically.  We needed something that was economical, had a long range, wasn't too large and wasn't too tall. (Lots of bridges to pass under).  In April 2017 we finally ...
Read more

Dog River Marina - Mobile, AL

Image
Another gorgeous morning leaving our final anchorage. Off to Dog River Marina and Mobile Bay. Back to civilization after many days of being in very remote areas. This bridge is at the top of Mobile Bay and is our welcome back to salt water. The scenery becomes very industrial and the number of tows and barges are many.  This is a main hub and they are definitely here to work! Stay out of there way...the BIG guys always win! Even what appear to be a few military vessels are here. Looking back at Mobile, AL below. These ships above and below are each over 700 feet long. This is what our chart plotter showed coming into Mobile.  Everyone of those purple pentagons or triangles are tows, tankers or cargo ships...YIKES! They looked like they were on a collision course. Hopefully most are parked and they were! The pic below was a bit odd, the tow was pulling instead of pushing, which is more customary.  ...
Read more