No - it's not that kind of break - we're just on a break from the Great Loop. After close to 3,000 miles over four and a half months, it was time to see our amazing kids, grandchild, and friends.
The river system from Chicago - down the Illinois River to the Mississippi and up the Ohio River to the Cumberland River required lots of planning for lock openings and anchorages. You don't want to anchor out in the river as an errant barge can ruin your day. So we research the anchorages and free walls and try to coordinate those with the lock openings.
The goal for the Mississippi is to get on it and off of it - as quickly as possible. We also needed to conserve fuel as there are very few fuel stops along the way. We charted out a two-day trip on the Mississippi. The first day had two locks and was 80 miles, and the second day was 100 miles but had no locks. Basically, two pretty long days. Fortunately, we had really good weather and could take a very fuel efficient 8 mph and add in a few mph of current for a nice pace down the river. The first night on the Mississippi was at a free wall by the Kaskaskia Lock. We needed to hustle as they were starting a dredging operation that would close the free wall. We were pretty lucky and able to squeeze into one of the last spots on the wall, 9 boats in total.
Day two of the Mississippi was pretty long, and we almost made the mistake of anchoring too close to the channel. Fortunately, we contacted a tug captain who politely told us that our anchor location was less than ideal. We quickly pulled up our anchor and caught up to our friends who were anchored in a small river off the channel. The Angela Toehead anchorage initially looked a little frightening as there were several dead trees in the river. If you catch your anchor on one of those it can be a problem getting it up. We set a trip line that allows us to retrieve the anchor if it gets caught. Fortunately, the river kept us in a nice calm position all night and the anchor didn't get caught. Unfortunately, the dinghy motor didn't want to work and the trip to shore resulted in a muddy mess for Millie and the captain.
It felt great to be off the Mississippi in two days with our fuel tank in excellent shape. Now it was time to turn the corner and head upstream on the Ohio River to Paducah, Kentucky. Paducah was founded by William Clark as in Lewis and Clark and is famous for being the home of the National Quilt Museum. What - a quilt museum you say - wait till you see the pictures.
After spending 2 very hot days/ evenings in Paducah, Kentucky, we continued down the Cumberland River, through the Barkley Lock and arrived at Green Turtle Marina in Grand Rivers, Kentucky on Barkley Lake. This is the marina we had planned to leave Egret while we headed back to the east coast for October. The only issue is that we arrived 10 days earlier. This marina is huge and they have been very accommodating so we were able to spend a few days getting the boat prepared for closure for 6 weeks and to catch up with some loopers that we had not seen in a while.
1140 mile drive over 2 very long days from Grand Rivers, Kentucky to Jamestown, RI - we are now land lubbers til November 1.
