We have another short day today, only 57 miles and no locks.  Gary let me pull away from the dock this morning.  Bow thrust off, wheel to the right, power off.  Easy smeazy.  I did pretty good ;).  No wind or current helped too haha.

As we are traveling along we saw this big honkin ball in someone’s yard

What???

A bird’s nest

Floating nest, lucky birds

We saw a few of these as we traveled.  We figured they were some kind of measuring things and the birds just took advantage and built their nest there.

Saw another cool cave

Big cave

Another cool house

Nice house

We saw this clean up barge that we saw when we were on the Mississippi

and we saw where Meow Mix was made

An outhouse in the middle of no where

Peek-A-Boo outhouse

A tractor very close to the water’s edge and no fields in sight

Go John Deer!

Another weird measurement thing

A nuclear power plant

Power plant

With a weird thing on their chimney.  Do you think this is to keep the birds from sitting on top?  Hee hee.

Bird deterrent?

New way of fishing?

We saw these fishermen with little floaties around their boat.  The floaties are like a cut up beach noodle.  We have seen quite a few fishermen using these.  We first thought they had fishing nets hanging from them but we saw someone throw each colored foam thing out, one at a time, we think they had individual hooks on them.  I suppose with more hooks in the water it increases your chance to catch something.

We were even passed by a tow today!  We were traveling at 6.7 knots and he was traveling at 8.8 knots.  That has to be a first :).

Passed by a tow, how disgraceful!

As we were traveling by Huntsville, we heard these big sonic booms.  Gary thought it was coming from the boat, I could tell it was from shore but it reverberated through the boat.  There were 4 of them.  Scared the shit out of us every time they went off.  Turns out we were driving by an US Army Artillery installation.  That was an experience I don’t care to relive anytime soon :).

We are staying at Ditto Landing Marina tonight.  When we were checking out marinas before, this is one we looked at but no one was around to talk to.  It turned out to be a pretty nice marina.  We had 3 guys come and help us tie up.  It was a little windy but the Captain got her backed in no problem.  Later that night a small pocket trawler came in for the night

They are from WBL

Turns out they are from White Bear Lake!  Needless to say we invited them over for a couple of drinks and some dock tails.  Their boat is trailerable so they take it to certain areas of the country, drop it in the water and then take it out somewhere else.  They were heading for Nashville, opposite direction from us.  It was fun talking to them.  Their pocket boat is much too small of a pocket for me though :).  I think I may be spoiled.

So now it is off to bed, early day tomorrow.  TTFN.