Wednesday was a do-nothing day...drizzle, rain, nice breeze...talked to lock master in the morning to see how things were going...he assured me that things were going according to plan in spite of the weather and to listen to VHF 14... About opening at 7pm. We didn't need to listen because the tows stared showing up...and moving through...but we did have our radio on. Fixed a great pork tender on the grill..and went to bed early as we wanted to make it to Chicago ASAP. About 9 PM, our AC water flow was really low...and pump seemed to be making strange noises...so we shut things down and opened windows...Floyd's thought was that river sludge was restricting either in take or outflow and as soon as we moved away from the wall things would eternal to normal. Tows passed through all night...

5 AM is really early...but the bridge tenders were more the pleased to coordinate their openings and we arrived at the lock at 5:45....only to be told that they were closing at 6... That guy got an earful of frustration from this ol gal...he admitted that they knew we were down there...knew we were coming...and yet made NO attempt to communicate with us...Really!! Got to obey rules, ma'am...you'll be first up when we open at 10.... Yeah, right!  Thankfully they had a short cement wall we could tie to while we continued to wait....

Two tows showed up at 12 or we'd probably still be sitting there. WILLIAM C pushing a six-pack of sand and gravel and light tow JOANNE...got them moving big time. And of course, we got to tag along....we left the lock at 1PM...we have giggled more than once about winning the award for patience and bad timing...from first call to lock through, we've concluded our wait for lockage at Lockport Lock And Dam was 52 hours. So ready to be done with river and locks...but one more.

Figuring we'd make it to our slip before it got dark...and with any luck at the last lock maybe by 6:30...we somehow neglected to consider that we'd be transiting downtown Chicago during rush hour.  Lucky for us, river traffic wasn't never as bad as road traffic ...and we can sneak under all bridges except one...we called him and he said rush hour started for them at 4:30... No way we could go fast enough and still have gas to get there before then....so I called back and whined...he said "so maybe you'll have to wait 15 -20 minutes".... Woo hoo...we came around the corner...honk honk...10 foot railroad bridge lifts and we scoot through. The lock at Navy Pier was busy and we went right through...6:35... We are in our slip, tied secure and Dakota is relieved. We are actually in the same slip we had here three weeks ago...every thing familiar and wonderful....off the river and no more locks!! Time for celebration!! But we're old and tired...and just want to eat and go to bed! So we did! BTW, Floyd was right about the AC...working just fine! (But you should have seen the mess of sludge that we had trapped between us and the wall...skanky!)