We called the Wilson lock this morning by phone to see when they could get us thru, they said we should mosey on over and it should only be about 45 minutes so we left the marina and slowly made our way to the lock.  They are closing this lock from May 5^th thru June 11^th so we wanted to make it thru before the rush.   Although the lock does have an auxiliary lock, it would take a lot longer to ferry the boats thru it.  The Wilson lock has a 94 foot lift, their auxiliary one is broken down into two 60 feet locks right next to one another.

Auxiliary lock at Wilson

The way the auxiliary lock works is you go in the first one, they raise you some, then the other lock door opens, you drive into the next chamber and they raise you the rest of the way.  Sounds kind of cool actually but I wouldn’t want to be fighting the tows for the lift time.

Anyway, we started our slow approach to the lock.  Oh oh, there is a tug waiting to go thru too

Double Tow, here is last half

After we floated in front of the lock for ½ hour,

No current or wind while we floated, no engines, waiting for lock

the Lock Master told us to tie up to the auxiliary wall.

Tied to auxiliary wall to wait our turn

At 11:15 we were finally able to lock thru.  Wow!  This is big!

Entering Wilson Lock

Once we were tied up to the lock wall we were looking at the doors we’d be exiting out of

Hmmmm, no seam in this wall….

Huh, no seam in the middle, I wonder how we are going to get out of here?  They have lifted us as high as we are going to go.  Looks like the wall is going

 Going

 Gone!

A huh!  That is how we get out this.  Whew, I was getting a little worried :).  And I must say, that was the smoothest ride we have had yet in a lock.  Well done Gentlemen!

As we proceed out in the bay

Above the Damn

to the next lock we saw two boats beatin feet to the lock.  Gary and I chucked to ourselves because there were two tows waiting to go down.  Na Na Nabooboo, you’ll be sitting there for ever suckers! Haha!  Well we  were in for a surprise when the Lock Master told them to keep coming and he’d lock them right down.  Man, were they ever lucky!

As we made our way east we saw another cool house

Another cool house

A cave

Small Cave

And then this weird thing

A dog house….out here?

A dog house?  Weird, must be some kind of measuring thing or someone is really mad at their dog.

We have another lock to go thru before we stop for the day.  The Joe Wheeler lock.  We got there at 1:15 and find out we’ll have to wait 1 ½ hours before we can go thru, darn tows :(.  Luckily Gary can go on the www.activecaptain.com website thru our Garmin Blue Charts that we downloaded on our I-pad, and find us a nice place to anchor while we wait for our turn at the lock

Nice anchorage

A couple of hours later we were on our way to our next marina, Joe Wheeler State Park.

Hotel and docks

Joe Wheeler State Park

This Garmin boat followed us in,

Garmin Survey Crew boat

Kind of like the Google car I saw while we were down at Orange Beach.

This is the first place we went to where we had to remember our slip number and then go into the hotel to register.  Then the girl at the front desk handed us a kind of thick piece of paper that listed our name and the days we paid for.  She told me to put it on the clip board that was on the electric pedestal.  Clip board?  I told here there wasn’t any clip board on the electric pedestal.  She said that if there wasn’t, we could just find some place to put it so anyone who checked would see it.  So….who here knows what a clip board looks like?Clip board right?  That is what I though.  So we get back to the slip and ON the pedestal there are two clips, and that is where you are supposed to put your piece of paper.   I guess that is the southern version of a clip board.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the hotel at night

Pretty

Plus look at that moon!  You can even see the stars!

See the Man in the moon?

So after we kick some kids off the dock it is time to kick back, enjoy the evening and have some wine :).