Heartland of America

 How did that name come about?

After Ottawa we really entered the land of towns that you simply wonder why they exist. Henry was one such place. On Sunday September 25th we cruised 44 miles to an anchorage just below Henry behind a small island appropriately named South Henry. It was a beautiful anchorage and protected from barge wakes. It was here we met back up with a young guy from Alberta Canada trying to single hand a 50’ Cruiser Yacht.

What is worse is he is way over his head. We felt bad for the guy at first when we first met him at a lock. He wound up rafting up to us to lock thru. When he came up on us I asked him to toss me a stern line. When he did he gave me the whole line!!! I can only imagine he must have been stressed. Well he was there and I went over in the Dinghy To say hi. He shared with me that he spent the night aground on a sandbar because he cut the corner to sharp to enter the anchorage. 

Remember, the Illinois is 9’ low. So he followed me into town in his Dinghy as he wanted to get supplies. When we got there the poor chap had forgot his shoes. He tougher it out and we made our way into the nearly nonexistent town. It turns out that the only reason the town is there is due to the construction of one of the first locks on the Illinois back in the late 1800’s. Well let me tell you nothing much has changed.

On Monday we headed 35 miles to Peoria home of the corporate center for the heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar. There presence is everywhere in the small city. They have a neat museum that we were able to go to and is where we learned where Caterpillar got it’s name. Back in the 1800’s one of the founding fathers called to photographer from the local newspaper to take a picture of his newly designed track style tractor.

When the photographer saw it he said it looked like a giant caterpillar. So the name stuck. The city also had a really nice baseball stadium. Downtown Peoria seemed like another one of those towns that is still trying to figure out what to do next. There had been some reports of boats being boarded in the night but fortunately we did not experience any of that.

This giant earth moving dump truck weighs 1.2 million pounds and has 14’ tires. It can only operate on certain ground or it will sink into the earth. This model of one has been setup as a movie viewing area. 

Town Hall

Mel Price lock