Hygge Adventures: 009: Speaker of Truth or Cranky Old Man?

We woke up on November 3^rd to another cold morning, the temperature in the boat was a slight improvement over the day before at 37.5 degrees! Greeting us was a somewhat deflated dinghy. Now basic physics dictates that inflated vessels will deflate the colder the ambient air, and I had been putting in more air into it as the days got colder. But I put in air yesterday and it was slightly warmer today. Thus began the battle with the dinghy and my twice-daily need to inflate it so it would not sag into the water. More on this later.

We headed out of the anchorage after waiting for a tow to get mostly into the Lagrange Lock:

As we came down the river, we sighted another grain silo and loading dock. This picture shows the importance of the inland river system to the agricultural industry of America’s Heartland. Depending on the size of a barge, they can hold 60 to 120 semi-trucks worth of cargo. Now multiply that by a fifteen-barge tow on the Illinois River and thirty-barge tow on the Mississippi River, and you have a "sh-t ton" of cargo. And they move it much cheaper than if done by land. Impressive!

To show how much the Illinois River can rise, look at these houses on stilts:

Our destination was the G/L-famous restaurant and dock: Mel’s River Dock Restaurant. Gentle Reader, what I am about to relay to you may wind up to be the most controversial entry I write. But first, some background. All the Great Loop guide books and most FB Group comments, and blog posts commonly use the word “legendary to promiscuously describe certain places on the G/L trip. Everything is “legendary” this, "legendary" that. Many places are “must see” or “must stop at.” Mel’s is described as one such place.

There are two perspectives on what I am about to say: The first is that I am just a jaded person heading rapidly to the grumpy old man “get off my lawn” stage of life. The second one is that I am like the characters in the Seinfeld episode when Elaine and the gang called out the movie “The English Patient” for being boring and not that good while the conventional wisdom at the time was that it was a great movie. I.E. a classic application of “group think” mentality. The first person says it is great. The second person not thinking it was that great, doesn’t want to be an outlier, so they say it is great as well, and so on and so on until everyone proclaims it is as great, even though all but one of them truly believes it. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not shy about expressing my opinion. I guess I have some of my MLB Hall of Fame "I called them as I saw them" umpire Bill Klem’s DNA in me.

I'll let you decide which above the two perspectives is correct.

My opinion of Mel’s: ”ehh.” The “legendary” brisket was good, the people were very nice, but does a “legendary” place serve margarine with a baked potato? The breakfast in the morning (eggs over easy, sausage, hash browns) was served cold and the eggs were served over hard.

Frankly, the highlights of our stop at Mel’s was dining with our flotilla members and the kittens hanging out around the restaurant. (Now, would a grumpy old man have gush over kittens?).