Anchorage at Bar Island, Illinois River

Another day warm day of cruising the river. I often wonder if I will find anything to share with you all. When all of a sudden I start clicking the camera button. Today, the flies seem to be out and we have these tiny bees that resemble humming birds flying around. What I mean is their wings move so fast and the are hovering in one spot. Anyways, we passed quite a bit of industry along the river today. We anchored at the south end of Bar island near the town of Beardstown Illinois.

This barge is being load with grain from local farmers.

We passed by Havana today. Seems like there are high-rise buildings.. Opps.. grain elevators!

LOL, I think this vessel didn’t know what to do so he was pushing the shoreline. Or perhaps taking a lunch break.

We motored past the Army Corp of Engineering dredging. They caught a fishing net in their grinder. This thing is like a gigantic vacuum cleaner with a grinder on the end of it.

The grinder/vacuum sends water and dirt through this tubing to move to the shore line.

The writing on the crane says..Slow No Wake. So Bryce: better slow the sailboat down.. right? We go so slow, we have no wake. LOL I think he just enjoyed watching them hard at making us new beaches…LOL

This is an area where they added more sand. Thank you Army Corp of Engineers for creating the beaches we enjoy so much!!

Carol Ann. Now this is a real tug boat. Ever wonder where your old tires go…LOL

And the sign read. Warning underwater Hazards Plumping Station Stay clear.

It’s Saturday and we are seeing boaters on the river. Most of the time they wave and smile as they go by.

For some reason my childhood mind was thinking of a fairy tail. Where a princesses was waiting for her knight in shining armor to come rescue her.

Hard at work and they still took time out to wave.

Bryce said it was crew photo time, but he forgot to tell George to look at the camera.

This guy had his 4 wheeler in his boat and pulled up to this shoreline.. What a neat way to move your 4 wheeler around. We saw another boat zipping down the river with a 4 wheeler on the bow.

This boat rushed passed us so fast I hardly had time to grab my camera. These guys were waving vigorously!! Must have been a great Saturday for them!

Okay, I thought it was time I showed you the river view. Since we left home we have traveled nearly 900 miles. We are enjoying the views of the Illinois River.

I think the spring floods have taken a toll on this poor house. The corner is now sagging due to the erosion of the ground of the support.

I need a new zoom lens.. Here is a Bald Eagle. It was cool perched on that branch.

I hope these don’t roll in to the river!

I was thinking the last time we passed here this was an open restaurant.

Now this was awesome! At first we didn’t know what was going on. Looked like a “push of war”. The large tow stopped in the middle of the river. Bryce had to radio him to see what side he wanted us to pass on. He replied our portside. It wasn’t till then I noticed a smaller vessel headed towards him from shore. See the smaller vessel at the other end? Anyways the smaller one was removing one of the barges from the Big tow. It was pretty neat to see.

Okay we are at the other end now. If you look closely you can see the center barge next to the green getting longer because it is attached to the smaller vessel. The center barge is being pulled out. These little tows shuffle the barges around.