Monday, August 24, 2009

Milwaukee to Chicago to Charlotte

As mentioned in the previous post, we enjoyed the festivities in Milwaukee over the weekend. This first picture is the skyline of Milwaukee as we arrived on Friday. Also , in an earlier post, I have recapped our weekend “Irish Festival” festivities while in Milwaukee.

On Monday, August 17th, in HEAVY fog, we departed Milwaukee for a 45 mile trip to Winthrop Harbor on the Illinois/Wisconsin state line. All weather reports indicated that the fog would lift early morning and the sun would appear before noon. Using the GPS chartplotter and radar, we left the marina fully expecting the fog to lift “at any time”. How wrong the weather reports were and what a journey – we followed the radar all day and the most we saw was the nose of the bow! The picture at the right was taken as we departed the Milwaukee marina. It is essential to have great equipment at all times and especially at times like this - our trusty Garmin GPS led us all the way. Through heavy fog the entire trip, we finally arrived in Winthrop Harbor mid afternoon. I don’t think we were ever more relieved to be tied to the dock!
On Wednesday, the weather was perfect and the water was calm for our 40+ mile trip to Chicago, arriving early afternoon to our marina downtown. The next few pictures are of the Chicago skyline on our approach, the skyline with the Navy pier in the foreground, and the marina with sailboats on mooring balls. While in Chicago, we biked through the downtown area parks and river front, ate a Chicago deep pan pizza from Giordano’s, visited Soldier Field (home of the Chicago Bears), and enjoyed fireworks at the Navy Pier. A great visit to a great city!

Our flight to Charlotte is scheduled for Friday afternoon so we left the downtown marina in Chicago late morning Thursday for the short trip to a marina south of Chicago on the Little Calumet River.

These next 3 pictures are from the bow as we are coming out of the Chicago lock, are traveling on the Chicago River through downtown, and of an Amtrak bridge south of Chicago that we had to wait on so we could continue our short trip. We will leave “Still Busy” here for 11 days where she will get a much needed rest along with a wash, detail, and wax in preparation for the remainder of our journey. We have traveled almost 3000 miles since leaving Charleston in April and are now half way through the trip. This journey continues to far exceed our expectations! From Charleston, up the ICW through the Chesapeake, Atlantic Ocean, Hudson River, Lake Champlain, Richelieu/St Lawrence/Rideau/Trent Severn canals in Canada, Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, and Lake Michigan we have spent over 4 months on the trip and can only hope that the 2nd half of our journey is exciting and successful as the first half. After our trip home, we will once again provide updates to our journey down the inland rivers to the Gulf. Thanks for the comments on the blog and the emails we receive from those that have followed us all along. We enjoy hearing from you as much as you have stated you enjoy following our travels.

1 comment:

Mamamia said...

Wow, each time I read the blog and see pictures, it looks and sounds more amazing than the last update. I forget what kind of camera you have but it takes fabulous pictures. So much detail of the skylines. I know you will enjoy going home for a few days. Hope to talk to you soon.

Nita