Time away

Mike and I decided to take off on the motorcycle for a couple of days. We made a reservation to stay Thursday night at Tara Point Inn & Cottages in Grafton, IL. The main house, a bed and breakfast, is perched high on a bluff and overlooks the point where the Illinois and Mississippi rivers meet. Unfortunately, we were told the main house was full so we stayed in one of the cottages.

This was the spectacular view from our cottage.

Sitting out on the private porch was so calm and peaceful.

While relaxing on the porch we had some unexpected company.

Now for the down side of the trip. There has been a lot of flooding this year and Grafton, sitting right on the river, was no exception. However, what did surprise us was the River Road that runs through Grafton was just opened two days before we arrived (Too bad we weren't informed about this when making our reservation). Therefore, the town was still in a clean-up mode and many of the businesses were shutdown.

We ate lunch at O-Jan's. Good catfish! They too had flooding, but were open for business. Take a look at this picture, look how high the deck is, the tables on the deck had been under water.

This picture of O-Jan's shows the water mark on the green wall, right below the top rail. The white sign at the top of the picture is there from 1993, when Grafton flooded and the water level at O-Jan's was 38.2 feet high. Wow!

We were told by a local that the water was still up at least 4 feet high. You can see by the signs in the water that there should be a road there.

Even though there wasn't much to do in Grafton, our stay at the cottage was very relaxing.