Ottawa Illinois 41◦20'.638 N 088◦50'.472 W

 We had another wonderful day on the Illinois River. I stopped counting the bridges; there are so many. Although we only needed to get one to open for us. We have put our mast back up now so we are now 28 feet tall instead of 19, so we will need to get a few more bridges to open from now on.

   Today we did only 3 locks and they were not too bad. I took some pictures of Sherri and Randy's boat as they locked through, just so you get the idea. In Canada when you go through a lock there are some lines that hang down the lock and we have to hook a boat line around these and go down. Here they have these large bollards and you wrap you line around them and they go down with the water level. Much easier to do but there are only 3 bollards per lock so not too many options of where you go.

   So as the note says we are now in Ottawa. It is a very small city and there is not a lot of dock space. When we arrived here there was already a boat on the dock. This means there was only enough room for one more boat. Jim and I tied up to the dock and Randy and Sherri Tied up to us. This is called rafting. We are quite comfortable, I think there is about 20 bumpers between the two boats so we are not too concerned with any damage. We went for a walk into town when we got here, but there was not too much to see so we spent the rest of the afternoon on the lido deck, having docktails. Randy and Sherri then joined us for dinner, potluck style. It was a wonderful evening with very pleasant company. Tomorrow we hope to make it to Pioria.

   Oh I almost forgot, we got our first look at Asian Carp today. For those of you who don't know, Asian carp are a fish that was brought into the Mississippi to help control some other type of pest. They were initially penned in, however something happened and they got out. These fish spawn 3 times a year and eat their weight every day. They produce so well and eat so much that they are killing off other species of fish and are breeding by the millions. They are the reason for the electric fence on the river. What is most interesting about these fish is that they spook easily with noise. So when a boat passes by, the noise of the engine makes them jump out of the water. Sometimes onto people's boats. They can get very large, up to 100lbs. Once they are on your boat, their gills open and they start to bleed profusely in about 2 min. So if you do not drop them back in the water immediately you have a serious mess to contend with. Hopefully our boat is too high for them to jump up. From what I've seen tonight, they can jump pretty high. I'm sorry I did not get a picture of that, but I am told that we will have lots of opportunity to get some pictures. Good night all.