Past Chicago and more…

We managed to get two kayaks at Chicago. After going through Chicago downtown we made our way through the Chicago canal. When we were about to connect to the Illinois river we were threatened to have the coast guards called on us (because of some electric lines going through the canal to keep the asian carp away… Something along these lines). So we just crossed the road to get on the Des Plaines river. After some mini-rapids and very shallow areas and some nice scraps on our new kayaks we finally connected to the Illinois river. We went below Route 66 and went through our first lock of the trip shortly after.
We are now located at N41.18.318 and W088.38.019. We are hoping to have lunch in South Ottawa tomorrow (in Illinois that is…).
So far we have been fairly slower than our estimations. Head winds are very strong and sometimes we feel like we are on the ocean. Current is less than we had hoped. Weather has been changing a lot as well from hot to cold. We had some showers and many thunderstorms last night (some of them very close by).
In about 10 days, maybe after our first shower of the trip… we hope to be able to post some pictures 🙂
(Sorry if emails, comments are unanswered, but this post was sent by email so we can’t see what is going on…)