Day 10: Hammond, IN, to Joliet, Il

Up, up (out of bed) and away by 0700, to BEAT THE BLOOPERS! Off we go from the marina into a very slight swell on the lake and a short transit up to the mouth of the Calumet [kal-oo-met] River. A Canadian (Algoma) freighter exits the river and heads out onto the lake. We enter, and proceed through several drawbridges, where we have to call the bridge tender each time and request opening. These first miles twist and turn and are extremely industrial. A lot of lake shipping, especially tug-and-barge, loads and unloads in here, but not today... it's Sunday.

Our first holdup is at the first Lock, the T.J. O'Brien Lock & Dam, where we wait for a tug-and-barge to exit the chamber and a couple of rec boats to come down before we and a couple of other rec boats (fishers) can enter and be 'locked-up', as they might say. This is only a '5-foot' Lock. The lock and dam are 326 river miles (525 km) from the confluence of the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. The lock—which has a maximum lift capability of 5 feet—contains a pair of 'sector gates'--which I've never seen before--at either end,. These are more conducive to operations in a waterway that can reverse direction. The lock and dam are used to maintain a 9-ft navigation channel and to control backflow into the lake—during heavy storms—from the polluting industries along the Grand Calumet and Little Calumet Rivers and the outfall of the Calumet Water Reclamation Plant.

After some miles of sinuous, industrial activity, the waterway ceases to be the Calumet River and we find ourselves in the Cal-Sag Channel (the name is short for 'Calumet-Saganashkee'). The Cal-Sag Channel was constructed between 1911 and 1922 with the primary purpose to reverse the flow of the Little Calumet River and drain untreated sewage and stormwater away from Lake Michigan and into the unfortunately-named Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal (hereafter to be referred to as the Ship Canal). The Sag-Cal served as the rowing venue for the 1959 Pan American Games, was subsequently widened to allow use by increasingly large barges and is also used by recreational boaters.

SEPA (Sidestream Elevated Pool Aeration) Station 5, at the confluence of the Ship Canal and the Cal-Sag Channel, in Lemont, Illinois, is one of several such installations that use cascading falls to maintain dissolved oxygen levels in the waterway. The monument near SEPA Station 5, at the confluence of the two waterways, is a lighthouse that commemorates the engineering feat of the canal system; the general area being part of the Illinois and Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor. This location features a scenic park environment with waterfalls which are part of the aeration process. In 1999, the entire Ship Canal system was named a "Civil Engineering Monument of the Millennium" by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

We continue downriver, past numerous barge-loading stations where heavy loads of aggregate and other bulk materials are loaded onto barge lash-ups to be pushed down the river or up to Chicago or Lake Michigan by powerful pusher tugboats.

We arrive at Lockport Lock & Dam, wait for an 'upstream' rec fisher's boat to clear, and enter the chamber to tie up to a floating bollard. These make Locking easier, by not requiring whoever is holding the rope(s) to pay it out or ensure it slides down the pipe as the boat descends with the retreating water level. Departure from this Lock means the Ship Canal has ended and we're now in the Des Plaines River. When--after a further 20 miles--we reach the confluence with the Kankakee River near the Dresden Nuclear Power Plant, we'll be in the Illinois River which will take us to the Mississippi.

The bridge tenders at several drawbridges in Joliet are called to open for us (and the Blooper following), and we finally edge over to the wall at the Joliet City Dock, beside The Billie Limacher Bicentennial Park. This is the closest thing to a marina in Joliet, but it's free and so is the power we plug into. Joliet, with a population of around 152,000, is the local county seat.もっと詳しく