Monday, September 11 - New Boston, Illinois

Started the day with a beautiful bike ride along the waterfront of two of the Quad Cities 

(Bettendorf and Davenport, Iowa).

Beautiful homes, even a couple of mansions, and lovely fall leaves were part of our ride.

Here's yet another picture of the bike trail from the river.

At the south end of the Quad Cities is Lock 15/15A.  15A is an auxillary lock that is used throughout the season when tow traffic gets heavy.  We were lucky that 15A was open and in use, otherwise we would have had to wait 45 minutes for a towboat to finish locking through.

We leave 15A as the gates close, and to the right of us is the towboat getting ready to push out of 15.

A little farther south, and we see another tow, and another, and another.  The buzz is that Lock 26 (near St. Louis) has been closed for a week due to repairs, and now there is a major back-up of tows!

Once we're out of the Quad cities altogether, it gets VERY industrial!

Well now, this is interesting!

Soon we come to Muscatine, Iowa.  When we returned from Maryland, we anchored here with John and Kellie Peltier.  We were told by the sheriff that we could not leave our boat unattended if we decided we wanted to go into town; WHAT?!  Good thing we were just passing through this time!😏

Beautiful mansions peaking out of Muscatine's hillside!

Around the river bend of this pretty town, it turns VERY industrial (seems to be a common theme)! 

In the distance we see a larger, cruising boat with a "Great Loop" 

flag (we only see fishing boats and towboats)!  This 38 foot Silverton, "Follow That Dream", just completed the "Loop" at Grafton, Illinois (where the Illinois River merges with the Mississippi River)!  After we congratulated them, they told us they were returning "home" to East Dubuque after completing the loop in 13 months!  They wished us well as we continued to our last lock of the day.

At Lock 17 we are reminded of this most important day 9-11 . . . we will never forget!💝

We find a beautiful anchorage below Lock 17 where MANY pelicans welcome us!

After a wonderful spaghetti dinner created by chef Dave, (thanks to Jeannie Olson💓and her homemade sauce), we enjoyed a beautiful sunset!  God is good!