A Movie and Preparing for the Rivers

I found out that the movie partly being filmed here is “Transformers 4” and I believe Mark Walhberg is the star.   Here is the truck that was parked where we walked everyday.  Some of the film crew were working on it.  

For several days film crew was all over the place blocking streets and keeping people moving by the set while the action was being shot. They also made part of an old theater area in uptown Chicago look like a small Texas town.  

Rivers:  We have definitely decided not to go down the Chicago River since we did the beautiful architectural boat tour and have had a report from Loopers already down river. They said it is only industrial beyond the tour.  We have seen the pretty part and don't wish to fret over the bridge heights... several bridges are a little over 17' and we are 17' 1”!  IF, by the time we leave, the pool height under them is high we might hit a bridge or at least have to turn around and go back to the entrance of the River. This also relieves the First Mate of her duty on top of the Sun Deck roof...whew!  I would have had to stay up there for a long way down the river until we cleared all those low bridges.   Of course which ever way we go we expect much of the rivers to be industrial scenery.

The Captain began to print the pages of the charts for the Illinois River...... all 142 pages here on a clip board!

These charts show all the bridges with all information about them, type.. do they open?  If so, what time or how often?  Or are they fixed bridges? The clearance from water height to underside of bridge.  Also, the locks are shown and the time of their operations.

The part that is unknown to us is passing a barge on river curves....well, actually just about everything about barges on the rivers will be new to us!  Here you can see the curvature of the River on the chart.

We have been told that the barge captains know the names or numbers of each turn and announce their approach on the radio.   We can listen and try to understand what “bend” in the River they are approaching. Some bends are way too narrow to pass these big tows without running the boat up in the mud on the shore!

We have recently heard that the tow or barge captains like to hear southern accents and might be more accommodating to someone on the radio talking with a Texas drawl or my long forgotten Mississippi tongue.  Gee, I tried so hard to loose those during my teen years as folks in California where we had moved teased me about it!

So y'all come on down and ride Miss gg with us for a new Adventure!