Day two and we're at the Illinois Valley Yacht Club in Peoria.

Another beautiful, warm, sunny day. We spent the afternoon up on the flybridge where the views are great and you can feel the day on the river. We stopped at Hennepin for lunch. Hennepin is a very small town with only 2 blocks of "downtown" and a public square with the courthouse. Then, after a few blocks of houses, you're out in the fields again. Hennepin sank a big barge up against the river bank and filled it up to create a nice public free dock right at "downtown". The old cleats on the barge are great for tying up and there's 6 ft. of water at the edge of the barge, so any size boat can just tie up and walk into town (see picture). A hardware store, grain elevator, food store, a restaurant, a boat and marine supplies store, an office for 2 local attorneys and the courthouse is about it. Nice friendly people.

After lunch, we saw an adult bald eagle fishing in the river. He didn't catch one even though there was a near miss as he swooped down, skimming the water and plunged his talons in, only to come up empty. Some fish is down there saying "Mom, a bird came and scratched my back!"

We also saw dozens of "balooning spiders". There are very long spider web strands floating in the air 10 to 20 feet above the water, each with a little white fuzz-ball of web strands and a very small spider attached. These are even out in the middle of the river where we were 500 ft. from land to either bank. I have no idea how they get started and how they get up that high. As the boat goes past one, the strand may catch on a radio antenna or the bimini top and then the spider will eventually end up on the boat.

We definitely enjoyed the nice weather, but NOAA is saying it'e going to turn cold, so we'll be inside the salon for a while, keeping warm, as we head to St. Louis.