Whoops!  I have been shirking my duty.  We made it to Aqua!  Yayyyyy! It is a little chilly here today, around a high of 61° but we’ll take it 🙂

We left Kingfisher Bay Marina on Monday 5th, Smokie was eating his breakfast and didn’t even bat an eye.  I guess he was really really hungry or he is getting used to the engines.  That night we stayed at a real nice anchorage.  There seemed to be some kind of farm off to our left and we could see a house up in the distance a little.  The description of the anchorage said you could hear the cows “Moooooo” and yah know what?  We could.  Several of them, we could even see them off in the distance.

It was pretty hot today so by the time we stopped the salon was cookin from the heat of the Girls.  We took the covers off the seats on the fly bridge.  There was a nice breeze there so we had a cocktail, did some reading and waited for the boat to cool down a little.

Gary playing Domino’s

While we were at anchor, I got Gary to play domino’s again!  Noticed the glass of wine?  A little bribery goes along way 🙂

I sleep on the couch as I always do at anchorage.

My bed during anchor

It took me a few times to figure out I need to throw off the back cushions to get more room for Smokie and me.

There was some fog on the river when we woke up but it was a pretty morning.

Fog in the morning

We decided this trip, as the current was a little fast and there was some debris in the water, we’d trade off on who drives.  We went for one hour on and one hour off.  Yes, Gary Stensby, I decided to hand over the wheel and let Gary drive more :), after all he is the Captain 🙂

While we were traveling up we passed this really big crane

Big Crane

We saw this guy hanging off the bridge, how would you like his job?

This is a job I don’t want

He looks like he is having fun though, doesn’t he?

Here are a few things we saw on the way…..nice place for a picnic

Picnic anyone?

And you tell me you have to make a call but your cell doesn’t have coverage.  Not to worry, just pull over and use this pay phone!

Any one have a quarter?

Here we go with the movie “The Birds” again, look at all these Vultures!

Ahhhhhhhhhh!

We saw this ginormous fork lift at some company, man, it was huge!

Giant Fork Lift

I was so busy looking at the big fork lift I don’t even remember what kind of a company it was.

We stopped at Columbus for the night.  Our traveling buddy, Paul and Elsie (his dog) on St. Somewhere, made it in a few hours behind us.  What a beautiful sunset.

Sunset at Columbus

We started out bright and early the next morning, we didn’t even need our alarm clock.  The next stop was Midway Marina.  It was warm again today and the closer we go to Midway we saw some some people swimming in the water, of course they had to be kids, no adult would be caught dead in that cold water 🙂

Swimmers near Midway

Floaties for All!

We also noticed along this stretch of land that there were a bunch of trees that were blown over, this must of happened when that storm went thru here last week

Trees up rooted

While we were at Midway, as we do almost all the marinas we stay at, we took a dock walk to check out all the other boats.  Midway has a large live aboard population and it was interesting to see the dynamic of the community.  We found this large floaty in one of the slips

Thomas the Turtle

I know if we were still on the river and the kids were younger, they would be pleading for this.

We left Midway early.  The next three locks are all pretty close together so we decided to slow down even more, 5.5 (6.23 MPH) knots on one engine, and travel with Paul in his sailboat.  We figured it would be a lot easier on Paul and the Lock Masters.  Here is our last lock of the trip, the biggest one too 84 foot rise.

Last lock of the trip

When we were locking up, the water in the dams are much more turbulent.  It was a little more difficult for me to keep the boat away from the lock wall.  I was very happy with the stick I made though, it did an excellent job.

Once we got past this last lock, we noticed how much cleaner the water was, it was amazing. The water is cleaner than St. Croix.  The scenery is so much different now than when we came down in January.  Here are some comparison pictures.  The TennTom now

Tenn Tom in May

Here it is in January (different part becuase the water is so muddy but you get the drift) when we made the same trip

Muddy TennTom

What a difference.  Here are some comparison pictures of Aqua now

Aqua Now

and then

Pier G and the Gas Dock

Everything is a lot greener now.

We will have some more posts as we explore Mississippi and the area around the marina.  There are plenty of things to do here and there is a lot of history, so we’ll keep you updated.

We have enjoyed our first year on the boat, May 18th will be our one year anniversary of moving aboard.  So far so good.  We are both still loving it, and we are “Living the Dream, Baby, Living the Dream”.  So until next time, TTFN.