To Chicago and Beyond

     We did go for a long walk in Winthrop Harbor on Monday, Oct 23.  It was our 35th wedding anniversary, so we took lunch at Linda’s Mexican Restaurant, which served very good food.  The town hasn’t much to offer - a couple of marine services places and a couple of taverns/restaurants - but it was a nice walk.  On the way back we took a detour through the Bluff Point Nature preserve.  Not a lot to see there in the way of wildlife, but the fall colors were pretty and it was quiet and peaceful. 

We left there for Waukegan on Tuesday, an easy hour’s run down the coast.  The Lake was a little lumpy, and we did consider keeping going to Chicago, but we pulled into the municipal marina for fuel first, and then decided to just stay there.  We were very glad we did, because shortly after we tied up, the wind picked up and soon it was blowing 25 knots.  We would not have enjoyed being out on the Lake in that!  We spent a quiet afternoon doing laundry and boat projects, and met another Looper boat - Jeff and Erica who are traveling with two young children on their boat Cool Change.

On Wednesday the winds were dying down in the afternoon and the seas were subsiding, so we decided to head for Chicago.  We had a decent cruise, though it was a little showery, and made it to the anchorage called the Playpen just inside Chicago Harbor, on the north side of the Navy Pier.  Apparently in warm weather, this area is crazy busy, but we had it all to ourselves.  Despite the city lights and traffic noise it was a relatively calm night and we had no trouble sleeping.  

    Today (Thursday Oct 26) we pulled anchor just after sunrise to head into the Chicago River, on the other side of the Navy pier.  There was no waiting at the entrance lock.  We fit under all the dozens of bridges except the Amtrak bridge, and they were already open by the time we got there, so it was an exceptionally easy and pleasant cruise winding our way through downtown Chicago.  There was no other traffic save a water taxi, and no real current, so we could take our time gawking at the skyscrapers and waving to the joggers on the river paths.  

Fun fact:  the Chicago River was reverse engineered to flow toward the Mississippi instead of into Lake Michigan, in order to send the city’s wastewater out so as not to pollute their drinking water.  Canals were dug to widen or connect the Chicago River with the Illinois, Calumet and DesPlaines rivers and voila the Chicago Sanitation and Ship canal.  Ships come in from the Great Lakes (or the Mississippi River) and Sanitation (waste water, ‘lightly’ treated and not disinfected) flows out to the Mississippi.  It goes without saying that this is not a river suitable for swimming or fishing in. 

Once out of Chicago, we moved through the industrial parts of Illinois.  Here there are quarries and scrap mills, remnants of old steel mills and refineries, and lots and lots of barges and tow boats.  We passed by several barges being loaded or unloaded and spoke to several towboat (they don’t call them tugs here) captains to ascertain how they wished us to move as they pushed two or three large barges ahead of them.  We’re in the river system now - these waterways really belong to these vessels.  We’re privileged to be able to use them too.

About 1:30 pm we came to the lock at Lockport, Illinois, just before Joliet.  Recreational vessels are at the bottom of the priority totem poll for locking and we were asked to tie off to one of the circular cells out of the channel while they locked through several towboats and barges.  After a couple of hours, we were resigned to waiting some more as another two towboats came around the corner, but this time, the tows offered us a chance to tie up between them and lock through with them.  We jumped right on it.  Dan was more than thrilled for a chance to see them up close and personal.  Each towboat was maneuvering three barges, and we were sandwiched between the barges, tied securely to one of them as we dropped about thirty feet.  

They let us get a head start and we made it to Joliet and tied up at the seawall there before they came through.  We’ll stay here for a couple of nights while we wait for our flotilla to join us.  We will all be locking through the next three locks together.  

Dan's Trip to Maine

I flew home recently to spend a week with my Dad in Maine.  Of note, he just celebrated his 93rd birthday!  

Besides several breakfasts out at our favorite “Mariner’s Diner” in Camden, and several lunches at Quarry Hill (where he resides in Independent Living), two of the week’s events stand out for me.  

First off, on my way home to Camden, I stopped off to see an old childhood friend who shares the name Al with my Dad. Maybe 50 years ago while I was cleaning out my Dad’s office building cellar, I came across the original AL’S sign from the famous AL’S EATS (now Red’s Eats).  My Mom (Marnie) and my Dad ran this hotdog/lobster roll stand back in the 1950s.  When I found the sign in that cellar I gave it to my buddy Al.  I don’t think I even asked or told my Dad about the sign.  Anyways, my buddy Al still have the sign in his barn and agreed to loan it back to me.  I then got permission from Quarry Hill to put it in the community room, and I snuck it in.  The look on his face was priceless when he saw that sign.  He hadn’t seen it since the early ‘60s and I’m sure didn’t think it still existed.  The sign had been removed from AL’S EATS back about 1956, when he sold the stand.  

The other event was more making lemonade from lemons.  I planned to pick Dad up Thursday morning for breakfast out in his 1930 Ford Model A, which is stored in my barn.  Problem was, when I got it out of the barn, it stalled and wouldn’t start.  So we drove to breakfast in the Prius.  On the way home I swung by my place where the Ford was sitting in my dooryard.  I said, “Okay, we’ve got to get this thing running.”

Well we proceeded to remove the carburetor and give it a good cleaning, and after the second time we cleaned it and put it back together (this time with all pieces) she started right up and we had a good ride around town.  We call it the “smile maker” since people can’t help but smile when we drive by.  I think we’ll both agree we had a pretty good week!  

Kenosha, WI

    Willie Dawes spent two full weeks in Kenosha at the very quiet Simmons Island Marina.  Kenosha was the birthplace and headquarters of American Motors, Simmons mattresses, several Brass foundries, LeBlanc musical instrument manufacturing, and Jockey clothing.  So much industrial history!  Now only Jockey remains - headquarters only, as the clothing is manufactured elsewhere.  It’s a vibrant small city, and most of the downtown area still features the beautiful Roman, Victorian, and neo-classical architecture. Kenosha also has the oldest working velodrome (short track bicycle racing) in the US.  

         It is the city where I was born. I lived here until I was nearly seven.  (I remember seeing bicycle races on Tuesday nights in the summer.)  My paternal grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great grandparents lived here, as did many aunts, uncles, and cousins.  The remaining clan (is it a clan if you’re German?) has scattered, but there are a few distant cousins still here.  My sister Terry came down from Milwaukee to drive us around to gawk at the homes where we had lived, and the one where our grandparents had lived.  

Dan and I thoroughly enjoyed the Kenosha Historical Museum, with its exhibits on the motor car industry.  My maternal grandparents - who lived west of the city - both worked for AMC.  The blocks-long factory buildings have all been raised now, and there are plans to build condos and a charter school on that land, but the area surrounding it still contains the many bars and pool halls that once catered to the three shifts of workers.  

Dan left for Maine on Friday (Oct 13) and I was alone for the following week.  I explored the cemetery where my ancestors are buried, stumbled upon the church they belonged to (and where their funerals were), visited the Dinosaur Museum and the Kenosha Public Museum, and visited all the shops of the downtown, and even took the bus a couple times to outlying shops.  My brother John came down to spend a day with me and Terry visited me three more times.  During one of those trips she and I did a little research on our grandfather Barney.  He was the city’s Finance Manager for many years, and one year was also the acting City Manager.  

        We were a little puzzled by childhood memories of a large ravine behind our grandparents’ house - what happened to it?  As we stood on the sidewalk outside that house, we could see nothing but a beautiful landscaped park behind it, through which bike trails ran.  We know things look different when you’re an adult - property is smaller, playground equipment is not as high as you think, eg - but there was definitely a deep ravine behind the house.  Our cousin Jean in New York confirmed this.  It was not a public park back in the 1960s!  Through some sleuthing at the Historical Museum, we discovered that Pike Creek (which is English for the native American ‘Kenosha’) meandered from the harbor on Lake Michigan through the downtown area and to the north.  Due to all the industry on its shores it was a toxic dump and public health hazard.  Plans began in the 1950s to channel the water underground and fill in its banks.  The area behind our grandfather’s house was the last segment of the creek to be dealt with.  The town first treated it as a big dump for appliances and other large objects and then eventually filled it in.  The public park opened in the early 2000s.  Mystery solved!  

We met some very nice people during our stay in Kenosha and I was very happy to have spent so much time going down memory lane with my sister.  

Dan came home yesterday (Sat, Oct 21) and this morning, we untied the lines and headed south toward Chicago.  The wind and waves weren’t conducive for us cruising the entire thirty miles to Chicago harbor, so we only went over the border to North Point Marina in Winthrop Harbor, Illinois.  It’s a huge marina, and must be jumping with activities in the summer time, but it’s very quiet this time of year and we are the only liveaboards on our entire dock.  The marina is surrounded by a nature park and is about a twenty minute walk from town.  We’ll go check that out tomorrow.  

Tommie is very happy to have Dan back on the boat!   Dan will write a separate blog about his time in Maine.  

Goodbye Milwaukee

         We had a great last week in Milwaukee.  We had a brewery tour!  We walked to the old Pabst Brewing Company for a history tour complete with free beer.  We had a great guide who was knowledgable and entertaining as he walked us verbally through the history of the brewing industry in Milwaukee in general and Pabst in particular.  The company still owns breweries but this particular facility is no longer functioning and the historical buildings now serve as event centers for weddings and other things.  

Pabst Brewing & Bottling 

Pabst Brewery Offices

        We spent a couple days exploring the older neighborhood of Bay View, stopping in a neat little neighborhood bar - not a true corner bar (ie, it wasn’t on the corner)  but it was part of a residence, so we’re counting it as one - for lunch and drinks.  It’s across the street from where the old American Motors plant was, now a factory manufacturing auto parts.  UAW members were striking, and a few were in the bar with us.  I remarked to Dan that some friends I’d worked with in surgery had lived above a family-owned bar like this one somewhere in this area.  It turned out this was the very same bar.  It’s changed hands many times over the years, but it’s always been a neighborhood bar serving the factory workers from across the street, the owners living upstairs.  We’ve checked everything off Dan’s to-do list.  

Clementine's   

        We had one last dinner with my sister and made our goodbyes with extended family.  We had managed to give river/harbor tours to both my nephews and their families so they all got a chance to be on the Willie Dawes, and we got a little more time with them.  The next night, as if getting in on the warm goodbyes, the Milwaukee Lakeshore park treated us to a short fireworks display right over our anchorage.  We don’t know the reason for the fireworks, as there was nothing happening in the Festival park or anywhere nearby, and there were no crowds gathered to watch.  It did seem like Milwaukee itself was giving us a send-off, even though it was a few nights before we actually left.

Friday we walked downtown to the beautiful historic Warner Theater to see the concert given by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra as their opening night of the Milwaukee Pops series.  The MSO took over the old movie theater and remodeled and restored its incredible art deco splendor to provide an exceptional performing arts space just for them. One of the ushers urged us to look around, even to go into the basement where old fireplaces are still part of the men’s lounge.  We spent the pre-concert time and admission time exploring this gem of a building.  The concert was A Night of Gershwin, which included performances by jazz singer Tatiana Mayfield and a special version of Rhapsody in Blue featuring the Marcus Roberts Trio.  It was fabulous.  

It’s Sunday night (Oct 8th) and we are now in Kenosha.  We left Milwaukee this morning.  I entertained Dan with trivia about the coastline as we traveled south, partly because I was feeling nostalgic, partly to take our minds off the swells that were rolling us around.  Now we’re tucked in a quiet berth in Simmons Island Marina.  We’ll be here a couple of weeks, one of which Dan will be spending at home while I keep on eye on the Willie, and Tommie.  

Tommie wants to know why the vacuum is blocking her doorway.

Still Enjoying Milwaukee

       

 It’s Oct 1 and we are still in Milwaukee.  The Illinois locks have opened, but they have requested that pleasure boats wait until the 6th so they can deal with the backlog of commercial traffic that needs to get through.  The AGLCA (America’s Great Loop Cruisers’ Association) has been working tirelessly to organize the 300 plus or minus Looper cruisers into flotillas, to make it easier for both the locks and the marinas to handle us all.  Dan and I chose to be in one of the last flotillas.  We won’t be heading through the locks until near the end of October.  

We made this choice for several reasons:  1) we didn’t want to be part of the initial rush, 2) we didn’t want to be affected by the inevitable glitches and delays as the locks work their kinks out dealing with so many commercial and recreational boats, and 3) we knew Dan had to be home in Maine for ten days in the middle of October.  Since I have family and friends here, it just made sense for us to stay here, though we will be moving to Kenosha (about forty miles south of Milwaukee) so I will have a marina berth while Dan is gone.  Kenosha is still close enough to Milwaukee for people to come visit or stay with me, and for Dan to use Mitchell International Airport to fly back and forth.   

With our plans hammered out, we’ve been able to enjoy our time here.  Willie Dawes spent over 20 days in the boatyard while Dan and I drove back to Boston to spend some quality time with grandson Leo and his parents.  What a happy, contented baby he is!  We got full charge of him while his parents worked and Leo didn’t bat an eye that near-strangers were in charge of him.  He smiled, he babbled, he showed off his rolling over skills.  We played and sang and read books, took him for a long walk, and even sent his parents out for dinner alone.  It was awesome.  It was hard to leave and come back to the boat.

We lived with my sister for the two weeks it took for Dan to paint the bottom and varnish parts of the interior, dealing with the deep cleaning and mountains of laundry that go along with breaking the cycle of fleas and ridding them from the boat.  We are now flea-free!  We launched the boat on Sept 14th and moved back aboard. 

We spend most of our time anchored in the Maritime Basin in front of the Summerfest festival park, but have spent a few nights anchored off South Shore Park, a few miles to the south.  Both anchorages have their advantages - South Shore is quieter, nestled in a residential neighborhood, and there is a fantastic Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings, as well as beer garden open four nights a week in the park.  The Maritime Basin is near the Historic Third Ward with its shops and bars, and being right downtown, also near all the museums and other shoreside parks.  They both have y-disadvantages - being downtown means being near the busy-ness of traffic and activities; it’s noisier, brighter at night, and there are harbor tour boats as well as personal recreation boats that come into the basin.  (We’ve been here long enough that one of the tour boats knows us and announces to its passengers that we are on the Great Loop as they circle around us and people wave and take pictures.) 

In South Shore, the disadvantage is that the anchorage is exposed to the Southeast, and the breakwater there has enough gaps to let the swell in, making for a rolly and uncomfortable night.  The Maritime Basin offers a much calmer anchorage, no matter what the wind direction is.  And then there was the unexpected pleasure of finding the memory bench of my cousin David, who passed away from cancer a few years ago.  It overlooks the Maritime Basin anchorage; I feel like he’s right here with us.  

It’s been great to be able to spend so much time with my family and to reconnect with old friends.  I moved away from Wisconsin 35 years ago.  Much has changed, but ties are still strong, even if a year or two (or seven or eight) has gone by since we’ve been able to see each other in person.  Emails and phone calls help, but it’s not the same as sharing a meal or an experience, and we have had a lot of reminiscing and a lot of laughter.  It’s been wonderful to get to know my nephews and their families - one of my nephew’s wives remarked she’s seen more of us in this past month than she has in her lifetime of knowing us.  And we had a bonus - one of our out-of-state sisters was here on business and we got to spend some time with her as well.  I have five siblings, and I have been able to spend time with all of them in this past year - three of them during this time in Wisconsin!  I also had lunch with two different close friends, one from my childhood, and one from my working days. 

Dan has been enjoying himself too - he finally had his first Friday Fish Fry, he’s been to two different beer gardens and one neighborhood bar.  Milwaukee used to be known for having a bar on the corner in every neighborhood. 

Dan says his time here will be complete if he can visit one of those old fashioned corner bars, so we’re on the hunt to find one that still remains.  When we’re out on our walks, someone always compliments him on his beard or comments on his beret, and he always sees something that tickles his fancy. 

When he saw the lineup of performers for the Milwaukee Pops, he suggested we get tickets.  We’re going to hear Gershwin in the performing arts center.  This time in Milwaukee will always be a highlight of our time on the Great Loop.