We left late on Wednesday as we had a short trip to Grafton, IL where we will be staying for a few nights thankfully! It has been a hectic week of moving each day The boat needs a cleaning and we both need a few days of rest.

This part of the river is less industrial on its banks, although we still found several barges and dredges working along the river. Grafton Marina was a full service marina complete with a store, pool and hot tub. The town itself is nick named “The Key West of the Midwest”. Having now experienced both, I would say it falls short of Key West. Taking into consideration the signs in town it appears to be a “biker” town, much like Laconia, NH. There were a few shops that dotted the Main Street as well as a post office and a fish market. There were also several restaurants and of course the requisite brewery and winery.

We took some time here to take a ride up the gondola and had lunch at the restaurant there and visited some of the shops. The most interesting was a wood shop that sold anything from a slab of wood to custom made furniture. During one of our walks we discovered that it was named after Grafton, MA as one of their founding fathers was originally from there. Small world!

Our trip on day 121.