Michael and Rebecca

At Joliet, Illinos we docked at one of the free docks along the cement wall between two bridges. From this location, you need to call the lock master prior to your departure to establish an ETA of lock opening. There is no place to "wait" by the lock itself. When we called this morning, we were told we had at least an hour and a half wait. There is a certain protocol to locking through. Priority is Government vessels, Barge traffic, followed by commercial traffic and then the lowly recreational vessel. It's understandable. But the delay would have placed us in a position of having to "make time" to get to our next destination, which is Ottowa, which is 47 miles from here. We decided to wait until tomorrow morning and leave at dawn. So ... what to do with the downtime! Laundry is always a good idea. These are two of the locals who helped us navigate around Joliet. Michael even took his bike and went to the bus terminal to get us a schedule if we wanted to see other sights in the area. Rebecca was equally helpful. She comes to the docks each day to talk to the boaters and see how she can direct them. She just likes to meet people, she said, and one day she hopes to be a boater herself. We were grateful for their input.