Islands on the Illinois River

8-28 and 8-29-2024

The lower Illinois River is covered in bald eagles.

We departed the abandoned lock at Henry, Illinois early in the morning on our way to our first Illinois River anchorage behind Willow Island. This anchorage was part of an abandoned coal fired power plant and was sufficiently wide and deep to accommodate our small fleet of boats. While we left early in the morning by ourselves, a lock hold up enabled us to catch up to the rest of the fleet of five boats who started 20 miles further south, near Peoria.

Upon entering the anchorage at Quiver Island, we found plenty of room and depth, but unfortunately, our anchor did not set on the first attempt. More unfortunately, while maneuvering to have a second attempt at anchoring, something from the bottom of the anchorage entered our thruster channel, and the thruster power was no more. This was a moderately terrible turn of events as I have become very dependent on the use of the thruster to maneuver this large boat in locks and crowded marinas. Our anchor did set on the second try and we had an otherwise uneventful, quiet and restful night at anchor behind Quiver Island.

We arose earlier than the rest of the fleet again on the next morning and departed solo for a second anchorage at Willow Island 90 miles further south. We made this decision so that we could reach Grafton, Illinois and enter the marina there early on Friday of the Labor Day weekend before the crazy recreational weekend boating started. This was particularly important given the lack of a thruster to maneuver in the marina. Our briefing in Heritage Harbor had strongly suggested that because of low water levels that the number of anchorages in the lower Illinois River was severely limited. Fortunately, we did not find this to be the case and came across multiple, attractive looking anchorages during our 90 mile journey. Unfortunately, our long day was made even longer by a three hour delay at the La Grange lock along with another looper straggler, Bo-Lin. We arrived at the Anchorage behind Willow River at dusk and settled in without incident for another peaceful night on the river. We had the Willow River Anchorage, entirely to ourselves. This channel behind the island was isolated and beautiful. Fully protected on all sides, this was an excellent place to spend the evening. The only issue was the prodigious number of mayflies covering our decks in the morning.

This part of the Illinois river is quite rural and undeveloped. The banks are lined by mature hardwood trees, and we found many, many eagles lining the waterway and scooping fish. The passage was quite beautiful, and we really enjoyed both days on this portion of the river, except for the occasional intrusion of large tows in the drought, narrowed channels.