The Illinois River has provided us with a new perspective on American industry. Even the industrial giants (Ford, DuPont, Goodyear, Chrysler) we knew from Buffalo are further up the supply chain than the work in progress we passed traveling down the river.
Behind the river banks we pass are miles and miles of farmland, let’s call that ground zero.
On the river, we see “warehouses & distribution centers”, this is stone but we have seen mulch and salt stored in this manner, as well.
PS – the towboats do not actually tow anything… they PUSH. The largest tow we encountered on the Illinois River Waterway was 15 barges, 3 wide x 5 long… You saw our boat next to a 3×5 in the last blog entry, wait ’til you see us next to a Mississippi tow!😬
This is one of the grain storage facilities we passed. Seems to be a lot of shrinkage from this one, the others appeared much more efficient.
This was a processing plant for some sort of grain. The aroma upstream of the plant was of cinnamon, as we passed the plant, cereal.
Peoria, Illinois was, until recently, the home of Caterpillar’s corporate headquarters; this is probably the most well-known company we passed.
Then, there is all of the infrastructure required to support the raw material processing, transport and the employees these businesses employ. Power stations…
… railways and the engineers who lift the bridges for the barges…
… tiny towns and the bars and the one or two restaurants they supported…
