We spent a great deal of time traveling on the loop with Chris and Laura from Miracle and Swen and Katja from Rykher.  They were behind us on the last leg of the journey so when they finally arrived in Grafton we celebrated!! We took the chair lift up to the Grafton Winery!  Who knew […]

Thank you Scott, Zach and MaryLou for the great welcome home party!  It was fun visiting family, and friends at the Okenfuss Farm! It is true, “There is no place like home!”

Mike was in Washington bringing Hank and our truck home after the loop.  I took the crews of Crustacean,  Idaho Red and Long Gone 2 on a tour of St. Louis.  We went to the arch and arch museum, Laclede’s Landing, Budweiser Beer Garden, St. Louis Basilica, had lunch at Zia’s on the Hill, stopped

We got a later start than planned for our wake crossing!  It was raining in Grafton, so we waited for the weather to clear.  We traveled from 9:05 to 11:23 to reach Alton Marina.  It was a beautiful ride along the bluffs and river road.  We fueled and had a pump out in Alton .

We traveled 10.03 hours or 64.8 NM from LaGrange lock anchorage to Grafton, Illinois.  It was a beautiful day for traveling and we celebrated at Grafton with our fellow loopers the near completion of our journey!!

We left Ivy Club Marina in Peoria at daybreak.  Our plans were in flux.  We hoped to get to Beardstown or to an anchorage 2 miles below Beardstown.  We had one lock to get through about one hour from the marina.  Mike called the lock master and the Peoria lock was ready for us with

We traveled 7 hours and 35 minutes to get to Peoria, Illinois.  We stayed at the Ivy Yacht Club.  Our flotilla had one lock to navigate with a very long wait.  Mike and I tied to a barge while we waited for the lock to be available.  All 16 boats were able to get in

This was our challenging day, we had a group of 15 loopers to get through the 3 locks with  the hope of arriving at Heritage Harbor before dark.  The first lock, Brandon, threw a wrench in our plans, and only allowed 12 boats in the lock.  Three of our faster boats volunteered to stay back

Mike was the Captain of Flotilla 2 to go through the first 5 or 6 locks together.  We moved from Hammond Marina to Marine Services Marina.  This got our group off of Lake Michigan and into the Calumet-Saganashkee Channel (Cal-Sag).  The Cal-Sag is a 16 mile shipping and drainage canal in Cook County.  This is

Margie and Bill masterminded a train trip to Chicago from Hammond.  We had a blast.  We stopped at the Museum of Science and Technology, walked along the lake front, taxi ride to down town, had Chicago deep dish pizza, went up the Willis tower and lots of other fun stuff!  Even met Oprah!