When we awoke in the dark the next morning in preparation for our pre-sunrise departure, we inspected the area around the boat and discovered massive mats of grass and debris surrounding the boat. Rather than risk turning on the engines, we cast off and pushed the Salty off into the DesPlaines River current. With the boat hook it was exceedingly difficult to move the mats off the side of the boat while near the shore but once the boat was in the middle of the channel, the grass moved off in big plates. We then started the engines and proceeded downstream to ask for a bridge opening, right before arriving at the Brandon Road Lock as the sun was rising.

We had heard horror stories about this stretch of the DesPlaines/Illinois River and the unpleasantness of transiting through the locks here. One group of boaters required over 14 hours to get from Joliet to Ottawa; another group was held up until 3:30 am at one of the locks taking nearly 20 hours of travel. We hoped for the best by getting up early at first light and praying for swift passage. We radioed the lock master at the Brandon Road Lock (down 34 feet) and were informed that we only had about 45 minutes to wait - and then an hour later, we were through! Six miles later at the Dresden Lock (down 22 feet), nearly the same thing - an hour later we were through.

By this point, our trail continued on the Illinois River leaving the Des Plaines River to go wherever it goes. Another 20 or so miles later, we came to the Marseilles Lock (pronounced "mar-sails") (down 24 feet), where the lockmaster supposedly hates pleasure craft and derives some satisfaction in making them wait for long periods of time. In any case, as before we were told we had to wait an hour and then we locked through very quickly thereafter. At each of these locks we experienced friendly, almost chatty locking staff, and we got no sense of irritation or impatience with us for taking up their time away from commercial barge traffic. These locks are fairly big - chambers are 600x100 feet - but unlike similarly sized locks in the St. Lawrence Seaway that cost $25 per lockage per vessel, here we pay nothing for lockage.

In no time at all, we had completed the 73 mile trek from Joliet to Ottawa, arriving at Heritage Harbor by 2pm - a seven hour journey, far shorter than we'd expected. Heritage Harbor is a new development of attractive vacation houses surrounding a modern marina - restaurant complex with solid floating docks. Best of all, we arrived in time to attend the daily harbormaster briefing at 4pm that would give us news of conditions and anchoring/dockage on the rest of the Illinois river up until the St. Louis area.

The wind had been blowing somewhat fiercely all afternoon (25 mph with 40 mph gusts) but the temperature was in the 90's and Heritage Harbor still had its pool open! Usually, they're all drained by Labor Day - a late summer day in October on the Illinois River!