Peace be with you... and us.


Today was beautiful.  Highs in the 60s.  A bit too much sun, but I'm not complaining.  After blog yesterday I worked late into the night fixing things and kept going in the morning working on stuff..   still much to do but some things are coming along.   

Today we left Peoria and traveled to Beardstown, but not without first giving the boat a bath in all of the most filthy areas.  Weeks of rain, leaves, mid tracking off docks and bird stuff - as well as spiders - she needed a bath.   

Reorganized some things below as well and then set off.   We could sleep in today finally because we struck off on our own.  
We did our first lock solo.  We were literally in the lock all by ourselves.   This area of Illinois is full of wetlands, game preserves, preservation areas etc.  Not many towns.  Not many houses.
Mostly just natural looking river, but often with high dikes on the side to help control flooding.    We saw two boats on the river all day (fishermen) and a couple of tug boats moving things around.  Not very busy.... And very peaceful. 

By the end of the day we found an anchorage just south and west of Bar Island in the area of Beardstown IL.    We probably could have stayed in Beardstown with our flotilla (most of them left earlier and arrived earlier) but we kind of wanted to try anchoring out.    
So far this anchorage is beautiful.  The river keeps us in position and we have full services here because we have a generator and tanks for everything .    If we had tied up in Beardstown we would have been near friends but it would cost about $50 and didn't come with power....  and then as a disadvantage tying in the city would make it difficult to run generator as long as we would like to because others would be next door perhaps annoyed...   Out here by ourselves it's peaceful.  We are cooking dinner and looking forward to a night's sleep.  

Tomorrow we continue further south!   I'm sure the weather will not be as nice as today
 ..
Finally I also pulled the trigger on a new dinghy late last night.  It will be a week (maybe two) before we have it... We should pick it up in Kentucky when we travel through land between the lakes.    We are looking forward to having a dinghy again and this one will be much more capable and less stinky.  (20hp four stroke rather than 15hp two stroke). 


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