Day 348 Grafton crossing our wake

Waiting to enter the Lagrange Lock on the Illinois River.








Diann and Liz






Leaving one of our anchorages






Some of the group









The gold burgee for crossing our wake






Liz and Steve Kemper




It is nice to have our computer back so we can stay in touch with everyone. Our good friends Jim and Brenda Hampton left the QC's today for their start of the "Great Loop". We are planning to connect with them somewhere in this area later this week. We are picking up our daughter, Dawn, and her family on the 3rd of Sept for a couple of nights and a 100 mile cruise with us on the boat. Our current goal is to reach the QC's by Sept 6th, Labor Day - We will just have to see how we do going north against the strong Mississippi current.

Grafton is where we came down the Mississippi River from home last Sept and crossed the mouth of the Illinois River. It just doesn’t seem like it has been a year! We still have 300 miles to travel north up the Mississippi River to reach home, however we have “Crossed our wake” here in Grafton which means we have completed the loop and you get to replace your white Looper flag (burgee) with a gold burgee. You take your picture with your gold burgee and send it into the Great Loop Assoc along with a recap of your adventure and it gets published in their magazine. Well, we could do that if I hadn’t screwed up when ordering our gold burgee! It was sent home to Hampton instead of to our current marina. Since our friends the Kempers also crossed their wake, we borrowed their gold burgee for our picture. Don’t tell – that may be against looper protocol! We’ll have ours in a couple of days thank goodness, since Tom has not been easy to live with!

This destination is certainly bittersweet since it seems close to the closure of our journey of a lifetime. We have met so many wonderful friends and seen so many beautiful parts of this magnificent country. At this junction of the rivers, you can turn south and head to Florida or north to the Quad Cities. We have missed our family and friends at home so we are turning north. We will make future plans for the next chapter of the cruising lifestyle that we have grown to love.