Cruising Guide from Lake Michigan to Kentucky Lake

Rick Rhodes

Jan 2002 · Pelican Publishing

About this ebook

A guide to cruising rivers along the Great Loop in the United States, from Lake Michigan to Kentucky Lake.

Covering over 800 miles of navigable inland rivers from Lake Michigan to Kentucky Lake, this book guides cruisers through America’s heartland. In eleven regional chapters, Capt. Rick Rhodes explores the entire navigable sections of the Chicago, Calumet, Des Plaines, and Illinois rivers, as well as parts of the Mississippi, Ohio, Cumberland, and Tennessee. Topics specific to inland cruising, such as negotiating floods safely and sharing rivers with commercial traffic, are addressed here. Also, by featuring numerous historical anecdotes and other river lore, Cruising Guide from Lake Michigan to Kentucky Lake gives insight into the region's past along with current restaurant and entertainment options.

Like all of Pelican’s cruising guide series, this book contains up-to-date and thoroughly researched information about the area, including:

• Five NOAA chart excerpts
• Twenty-one sketch charts
• Ninety-one marinas
• Fifty-three fuel locations
• More than thirty cities & towns
• Thirty-three GPS way points
• Fifteen locks
• Over 170 bridges
• 140 launches and ramps
• Hundreds of phone numbers

About the author

Capt. Rick Rhodes' expertise as a sailor is strengthened by his love of travel in general. By the time he was twenty-two, he had visited all forty-eight contiguous states, mostly by motorcycle. Later, he served with the Peace Corps in Ecuador. From 1981 to 1999, Rhodes lived aboard his thirty-three-foot sailboat and his twenty-eight-foot powerboat. He is especially knowledgeable about river cruising, having held a U.S. Coast Guard Master License for inland waters since 1986. Rhodes is also the author of Cruising Guide from Lake Michigan to Kentucky Lake: The Heartland Rivers Route, which covers an important segment of the Great Loop.