10 Oct Day 26 – Chicago Baby!

When we were planning this adventure the plan was to leave after the Labour Day Bocce weekend and race to Chicago to beat the bad weather on Lake Michigan.  I had planned on 14 days to Chicago, give or take, weather permitting.  So much for plans.  We actually only had 14 days travelling, it just took 26 days to do it.

We crossed from Michigan City to Chicago with moderate east winds pushing us along.  The sun was out and it was a glorious day to be out on Lake Mighigan.  Our new friends on Shoreline Traveller have dubbed her “Lake Bitchigan”, not all days have been glorious.

But that is all behind us now. 

There is an anchorage just north of the Navy Pier with a great view of the city where the locals like to anchor and have rafting parties called “The Playpen”.
We dropped an anchor and rafted with Knot Diggin to have lunch and toast our milestone.

Then we found our mooring ball in Munroe Harbor where we will spend the next few days until we have an oppurtunity to head down the Illinois River.  The river system is currently closed due to some maintance issues so we are on hold here until it reopens.  There are quite a few other loopers staged here and around the area waiting for the same.  The ALGCA is organizing us all into groups to help us spread out a bit and not cause bottle necks further downstream.  We are in Group 2 and will leave the Lake as soon as the locks reopen.  Hopefully Group 1 ahead of us will be able to make it through and open up places for us to move into.  It seems like a good plan that the AGLCA and our Group leaders have come up with and we are very greatful for their work.

After we were all set up on the mooring ball we hailed the Water Taxi and went into full “Tourist” mode.

We walked the River walk, (I didn’t post the pic of Jan showing her political opinion of Trump!)

We tried traditional deep dish pizza. (Most expensive pizza ever!)  Took tourist pictures in front of the Bean.

I paid some homeless girl to take our picture,

It was a little sketchy, she wanted me to be discrete about paying her because apparently they don’t allow that kind of thing.  But it all worked out and I got my camera back…

That evening I couldn’t stop taking pictures of the city lights.

A big day on our Great Loop adventure. We would have slept well if it weren’t for the fact that we were anchored in a washing machine, but that is another story…