In October 2007, as leaves changed color and migratory birds began winging their way south, Terrapin—my family's 39-foot, yellow, junk-rigged, cat-ketch sailboat—sailed out of Sheboygan, a small town on the western coast of Lake Michigan.

We had decided that it was too late in the season to continue our original plan of sailing up through the Great Lakes and out the Erie Canal.

Winter was on its way, bringing fierce north winds and storms to the Great Lakes. We could either sail north, enduring rough weather and unfavorable winds, or we could sail south. We decided to do just that. We would head to the Gulf of Mexico, by way of rivers and canals.

So we left Sheboygan and began retracing our journey down Lake Michigan. We stopped at three different towns along the way to restock supplies and rest.

Finally, a week later, Terrapin reached Chicago. We spent a couple days at a marina, unstepping our two 42-foot masts. It was disappointing to take the masts down so soon after putting them up, but there was no way around it. The route we had settled on would take us under many bridges, two of which are too low for our masts. We would motor instead.

With our masts secured on deck we left the marina and began our trip through downtown Chicago on the Illinois River. Morning dawned as Terrapin chugged down the river, and I stood on deck and stared. Skyscrapers towered above our suddenly fragile-seeming boat, like the walls of some bizarre canyon. Low bridges crisscrossed the river, swarming with early morning commuters. Now mast-less, Terrapin glided under the bridges easily.

As the sun rose above us the landscape around Terrapin changed, and we took a shortcut via the Chicago Sanitary Canal (which was dug over a hundred years ago to reverse the flow of the river—to carry raw sewage from the city south on the Illinois River). The skyscrapers and fancy restaurants gave way to smoke-spitting industrial complexes, which in turn changed to open stretches of grass and the occasional scraggly tree.

I read, studied, paced up and down, or simply lay on deck and basked in the sun and cool breeze. By evening we were happy to be back on the Illinois River and breathing fresher air.

So the days passed with life on the river taking a steady, uniform pattern. We would motor from sunrise to sunset and anchor for the night beside small deserted islands, or by the side of the river if that was the only place we could find.

Every couple of days we arrived at a town, where we'd anchor or tie up at a dock and go ashore to buy groceries and stretch our legs. We always enjoyed these visits, and not just because of the exercise. The people in the riverside towns were some of the friendliest strangers we've met. When we rowed ashore we were often greeted warmly by retired boaters or people who love to chat, who were eager to give us directions or rides to the grocery store, Laundromat, library, or other places.

While motoring through Illinois something happened that made me jump (quite literally) with joy, and my parents groan: We acquired pets. 

In Ottawa, Illinois, my mother and I stepped inside a pet shop—just to look of course. In the back corner I found a cage holding a small rat. The owner said, "She's mean, and she bites." I asked to hold her anyways, as I'd had rats before. It turned out the rat was just shy and scared. She had been in the shop for months, with no prospective owners, so what could I do?

We returned to the boat to have a family discussion. An hour later we walked out of the pet store again, this time carrying a cage, bedding, a pet water bottle, and most importantly: My new rat, Lyra.

Less than three weeks later Lyra was eating out of our hands and settled in her new home when we stopped at Metropolis, Illinois, where we found another surprise.

Metropolis is a small "one stoplight" town whose claims to fame are its name (postcards from the town proclaim it the "Home of Superman"), and Fort Massac, the site of a Revolutionary War military fort.

The area where Fort Massac is situated has a long history of military importance. In 1757, during the French and Indian War (a war between France and Great Britain over control of the region), the French built Fort De L'Ascension on the site.  When it was rebuilt in 1759-1760 the fort was renamed Fort Massiac, in honor of the French Minister of Colonial Affairs at the time.

But three years later, at the end of the war, the French abandoned the fort and soon after a band of Chicksaw Indians burned it to the ground. The English took possession of the fort next but they did not rebuild or regarrison it, and in 1778, during the Revolutionary War, Colonel George Rogers Clerk was able to easily take the entire territory of Illinois for the State of Virginia and the United States.

In 1794 George Washington ordered the fort rebuilt, and it remained a strong defense for the next 20 years. Then in 1811 the Fort was destroyed by a tornado, but it was rebuilt and used during the War 1812, only to be abandoned two years later.

By 1928 local citizens had dismantled so much of it for timber that little remained. The last time Fort Massac was occupied by U.S. soldiers was when it was briefly used as a training camp during the early Civil War, but it was soon abandoned after a measles epidemic killed many of the men stationed there. Finally, in 1903, due to the work of the Daughters of the Revolution, the state purchased 24 acres surrounding the fort and in 1908 it become Illinois' first state park. The present park has a reconstruction of the 1802 American Fort and an outline of the 1757 French Fort.

The morning after we arrived we all rowed ashore to explore the fort and look for a grocery store. As I was exploring the barracks I heard a meow from underneath the porch. I ran over and peaked under, but I didn't see anything. My parents called me, and reluctantly I went. A couple minutes later I ran back, this time dragging the rest of my family. There, hiding underneath the porch, was a little yellow kitten.

It took 20 minutes of lying on our stomachs and saying, "Here, kitty kitty,” but finally the kitten ventured far enough out that my mom managed to scoop him up. Immediately he started purring. We asked a park employee where the nearest humane society was, but he informed us that it was far away—and so full that it wasn't accepting more cats. He added that cats get dropped off at the park quite often. So we decided to take the kitten, whom I'd already named Oliver, back to the boat… temporarily. We would look for a humane society farther down the river.

A couple days and many kitten baths later Terrapin continued on down the Illinois Waterway, with her newest crewmember purring in my lap.