Ottawa, Illinois

The past few days have been warm and sunny, beautiful travelling days. Today was cold and windy, rained overnight. We had planned to stay here and take advantage of the courtesy car to go into town and get laundry done, stock up on groceries. Amazing how often we seem to need to do that. Since the weather was so cold, glad we had decided to stay put. Forecast is for a cool day again tomorrow, but we plan to move on in the morning. Eventually we should outrun the cold, we hope. The forecast is for warmer weather the first of the week. Captain Mo here at Heritage Harbor Marina went over maps with us this afternoon, advised us on good stops, etc. He did the loop a few years ago, so is quite familiar with our needs. We can't say enough about how helpful and friendly everyone here has been.
Ottawa itself is a city of 19,000, surrounded by both industry and farming land. It is located at the junction of the Illinois and Fox Rivers. The information book that we got says that there are 650,000 acres in agriculture production, and approximately 1,700 farmers. That is why we were seeing farms as we came along the Illinois River. The marina where we are staying is part of a huge development of homes and condominiums planned for this basin.