Touch of Class

So, how many of you figured out what happened to the crew of the Touch of Class?  We have had an interesting and crazy month.  As you all know, we have been exploring the river systems from Minnesota down to Orange Beach, AL for the past 2 1/2 years.  With the next logical step of shooting across the Gulf to Florida, we had some decisions to make. First, Florida has no covered slips and when they calculate dockage it is from the tip of the bow to the end of the swim platform, 54 feet, rather than 50 feet.  And the price of gas is very high there and along the East coast, so this makes boating there very expensive.

Then add to that my need to stay out of the sun (sure, so you’re looking at the Sunshine State 😉 ).  I didn’t feel I could live on the boat with no covered slip.  I figured it would be too hot during the summer months and I’d probably have to close all the blinds to keep the sun out, then it would be like living in a cave.  I wouldn’t like that at all.  So we have been bantering around the idea of getting a condo on a canal in Florida.    Of course what ever condo we get would get would have to accommodate a smaller boat.  To that end, we have been looking at condos in Cape Coral, on-line, for the past 6 to 8 months.  We had a very specific list of wants, the first being a place we can take our crew to

Ahoy Mateies

Cause what would life be like without our sweet Smokie?   You’d be surprised how many condos don’t allow pets!  Then we needed a place to put a boat, which has also been hard to find plus it all has to fall within our meager budget, which again, made the selection small.  Finally one that met most of our needs popped up on the radar so we contacted a Realtor.  To bad it didn’t allow pets  Of course now that we have contacted a Realtor, they were able to set up a search list the met our needs.  Now we had a bunch that met all of our needs.  We actually drove down from Chattanooga to Cape Coral to check out a bunch of them all in one day.  We found one that checked all of our boxes plus it faced north so there is plenty of shade for me and my face.

Lanai

We put an offer in, after some haggling, some inspections, some more haggling, we finally agreed on a price.  Holy Hoot, there was no going back now.  We drove back to the boat figuring we’d have to sell the Navigator in order to swing the condo deal.  We were planning on closing on the Condo on October 16th so we only had a few weeks to get our stuff together and put the boat on the market.  We crunched some numbers and figured we could afford to support the condo and the boat for at least 2 years.  Let’s face it, it takes some time to sell a boat and it is heading into fall.  If the boat didn’t sell, then maybe we’d rent out the condo and move back on the boat.  It is always good to have options.  In the mean time we talked to a friend of ours in Chattanooga who’s has a friend that was a broker who actually had his boat directly across from us in Chattanooga.  He came over on a  Monday and talked to us.  Between the two of us we figured out what a fair price on the boat would be.  He also said he was showing a couple of people some boats in the area and would we be willing to have them look at our boat cause he thought they would be interested in it.  Heck yah!  So one guy came and looked the following Wednesday, a family came to look on Thursday (they were both impressed with Gary’s white board in the engine room 🙂 ) and by Saturday we had an offer from the family!  Well knock me over with a feather!  Holy Hoot!  Settle down Colleen, the deal is not done yet.  Well, we haggled with them over the price, using text messages, and came to an agreement.  Wow, were we shocked.  Now we just have to pass survey and oil sampling tests.

So here is how the timeline went:

September 27th – drive down to Cape Coral to look at a come condos, spend 3 days there, find the one we want, make offer, have it accepted, drive back to Chattanooga

October 1st – drive back to Cape Coral to meet with inspectors on Condo, haggle some more with sellers, drive back to Chattanooga with a closing date of October 14th.

October 4th – Meet with boat Broker

October 7th – first guy comes to see the boat

October 8th – second guy comes to see the boat

October 10th – we have an offer

October 12th – we rent a U-haul to pack up our stuff in 28 boxes plus miscellaneous bags and plastic totes from the engine room.

U-hall packed to the gills

We didn’t quite take everything off the boat, it wouldn’t fit.  We’ll have to make a return trip to get the rest.

October 13th – find out survey on boat will be on the 16th.

October 15th – drive to Cape Coral at a much slower pace :)., closing date on the condo has been changed to the 16th.

October 16th – take possession of the condo in Cape Coral.  Meanwhile, back in Chattanooga, the boat undergoes survey and sea trial.  Get a call from our friend who showed and drove the boat for us while we were gone, and he said the boat passed with flying colors but there is a big nick in one of the props

Ouch

Still have to wait for the oil samples from the engines, trannys and the Generator.

October 17th – 22nd – frantically try to put away everything (did not succeed ;( )

October 22nd – We get an E from the broker, all oil samples are AOK!  Yahoo!  We close on the boat on the 29th.  By the time most of you read this we will be traveling back to Chattanooga to close on the boat and train in the new owner.

Did I mention that the condo came furnished?  Not only furnished but every nook and cranny had shit crammed in it.  I know one person’s trash was another person’s treasure, but not too much of the stuff here was a treasure, so we filled up a lot of trash cans.  And dirty!  Man!  If you walk around bare foot your feet get all dirty!  So, lots and lots of cleaning and scrubbing.  Plus we discovered some hidden surprises :(.

Master Shower

Can you tell what that is?  It’s a dead salamander!  Oh boy!

Smokie helps

Wham Bam Thank You Madam.  Holy Crap, in a little less than a month we found a condo, bought a condo, moved our stuff and sold the boat.  I think someone was watching out for us and it was meant to be.

Sooooooo, we are officially landlubbers now and we are also Floridians.  We have the driver’s license to prove it :).  We’ll still be traveling up to Minnesota to visit family and friends in December and a few months in the summer.  Hopefully we made the right decision and won’t miss the boat too much.  Now we’ll be on the outlook for a new to us smaller boat that will fit on the lift.

Our dock with a lift

Then we can continue our adventures on the little boat.  We hope to take some smaller weekend trips and maybe some 2 week trips in the little boat.  I’ll be able to post some of those adventures.  Of course there is always the exciting things to see and do around here.  I’m going to keep the blog going, cause I enjoy doing it, and I have had a few requests to keep it going.  Besides, it lets the family know we are still alive 🙂

We have a spare bedroom, so if you’re in the area, stop on in and visit the crew of the Touch of Class.  And by the way, even though we are dirt dwellers for now, the toilet will always be affectionately called…the head :).

One of our last places to visit (although I think we might have to visit the International Towing Museum before we leave) was the Chattanooga Choo Choo which used to be a train station back in the day but is now a hotel located in downtown Chattanooga. .  As we pulled up, Gary spotted a parking spot right in the hotel parking lot!  Score!  Free parking!  We whipped into the spot before anyone snagged it on us.  This makes this visit that much sweeter ;).  We entered the lobby

Lobby

Ceiling

More Ceiling

which was pretty cool but seemed kind of empty for such a big place.  Again, I think it is their off season.  We could tell they were making some major renovations in the hotel and the grounds.  We decided to take a little look see anyway.  Here is their dining room

Closed dining room

looked like a nice, bright place to have a meal.  Apparently they have a Brunch for $10.  Sounds reasonable.

We decided to made our way outside to check out the rail cars.  There were 4 rows of cars with about 10 cars in each row.  Some of them are actual rooms you can rent

See the table lamp in the room?

Only $229 a night!  I think we’ll sleep on the boat :).

This one served pizza

And this one was a meeting room

Most of the cars were pretty rough and had quite a bit of rust on them.  The cars that had the hotel rooms in them looked pretty good from the pictures on the website

Rail Car Room

The wooden roof over the walkway had parts that were rotting and falling down.  I’m sure something of that age requires a lot of upkeep to keep it looking good.

They did have a nice garden area

Garden area

with a nice fountain

Fountain

but there were quite a few shops and places that were closed.  We should of come in the middle of the summer when I bet it would have been hoppin.

We ended up not staying too long (good thing we got the free parking 😉 ).  We are now able to check it off our list of things to see in Chattanooga.  We are pulling the boat on the 1st for a little work that needs to be done so stay tuned for that fascinating post ;).

We went to see one of our few remaining points of interests, or “tourist traps”, as Gary calls them.  I was hopeful that this one would be really cool.  It had high marks on TripAdvisor.  So we made the trek to see the caves.  We we almost there when the British Lady on our Garmin had us pull into a new housing development.  I thought for sure the many times we have dropped her on her head had finally effected her directional output but nope, she guided us right to the parking lot of the caves.

Here we are!

This place also had a campground within sight and it was pretty full.  When we got out of the van, we noticed there was no one else around so we moseyed on into the gift shop where they were selling tickets.  OOOOOOOO!  So many trinkets!  I’ll have to control my self ;).  We bought our tickets and as there weren’t any other people there we got a private tour.  From the get go I could tell this cave had more “live” stalactites and stalagmites in it than Ruby falls.  

This whole cave system is about 5 1/2 miles long.  They have two tours, one is the walking tour that we took and they also offer a Wild Cave Expedition which can be from 2 hours to an over night stay.  I don’t know, looked pretty wet in there to be laying your sleeping bag down.  If you went on one of those tours, they borrowed you gloves, knee pads and a hard hat with a light on it. Yuk, who wants to put on a pair of old sweaty knee pads someone else has worn, not to mention a hard hat!  Needless to say, Gary and I passed on that tour.  Not because we couldn’t do it if we really wanted to….I just didn’t want to wear those sweaty knee pads ;).

So we started our tour down the nice safe path and the first thing we run into is WILDLIFE!  A salamander!  Gross little things, they better not drop on me while I’m walking.

Salamander

Our guide pointed out these “scabs”on the ceiling

Scab on the ceiling

No one has ever seen them fall, but when they do, the ceiling is left looking like this

Scab has fallen off

This is the only formation that they will actually see come together.

Next 5 years

It will happen within the next 5 years or so.  The next earliest one will take 90 years.

Then the guide pointed out this formation

Biggest formation in the cave

They thought it was the oldest formation but it turns out it is not the oldest, but it is the biggest one in the cave.

Then we saw these round indentations on the ceiling

Whirlpools

These are caused by the water creating a whirlpool as it comes out of the ceiling and spinning these holes in the limestone ceiling.

Big Boulder

They had quite a few big boulders in the “main” room.  They fell from the ceiling.  Good thing none fell while we were in there :).  They had some pools in the cave

Pool of Water

and the guy told us how they tell the visitors not to throw money in the pools.   How a few years ago they cleaned out all the money people had thrown in there and now they were waiting for the pools to naturally clean themselves out in hopes the salamanders would lay their eggs in the pools.  But you still have those people who think the rules don’t apply to them so they are throwing their coins in the pools.  Some people’s kids!

By the time the tour was done, it was just a little over 1/2 an hour, and cost us $32.67.  Gary thought Ruby Falls was better, I thought this one was better.  Maybe you should go to both and you can decide.

Smokie has a favorite cat toy  It’s the one on the right.  No….not the remote!  The little beat up leopard looking ball.  He loves that ball.  When ever we travel I make sure it stays on the boat so he doesn’t lose it cause he is always loosing it under the couch.  We have a stick that we use

Toy retrieval stick

that works pretty well in getting the little ball out, plus what ever else he has shot under the couch…bottle caps, other cat toys, batteries.  You just can’t drop anything on the floor without Smokie thinking it is a toy and needing to play soccer with it.  So anyway, to keep him from making a goal under the couch, we bought those Styrofoam  pipe covers.  Ya know, those things you put on your pipes to keep them from dripping down in your basement?  Yah, those.  Kind of like a beach noodle.  They work really good.  So Gary did one last removal of toys from under the couch and then proceeded to place the foam in place

Here goes the foam

Of course Smokie had to supervise and make sure there weren’t any of his toys still under there

Don’t let the couch slam on my head mom!

Once we were all done, Smokie was a very happy kitty.  And people wonder what we do all day 🙂

We heard from one of our friends on the dock that a marina close by had diesel fuel for $2.02 a gallon.  We couldn’t pass up a deal like that,  so we tossed the lines and headed out 

This also gave us another chance to check out the chart plotter we installed last spring.   Works like a charm.  I even hung out there for a little while.  Yes, I wore my big hat.

Poor Smokie wanted to come up with us

Please let me up, I’ll be good 

Suffer baby, you’re not getting up here.

There was quite a bit of mil-foil on the water

I told you how the fishermen introduced the weed to the river to promote better fishing.  I think they are sorry now.

Here is another marina, look at those big sheds.  Almost remind you of Red Wing doesn’t it?

The marina wasn’t too far away, 8 miles, so after a leasurely hour ride, we arrived at the marina. .  Like the name do ya?  We shop in a town called Ooltewah.  I know…..funny names here.  But doesn’t our boat look pretty?

Manly boat

There was a Dragon boat tied up at the dock too

We ended up taking 247 gallons but at $2.02 per gallon, we couldn’t pass that up.  That should keep us going for a while :).

Now the third place we went check out was called Rock City.  It was made up of various rock formations with a gardens here and there around the paths.  All the trees and plants were labeled so you’d know what you were looking at.  You could tell that it was not prime season because a lot of the touristy shops were closed.

We started out following the red trail, which was the longest.    You can see where some of the rocks are naturally formed but other’s have been built up.

Here is one of the many narrow walk ways they had there.  They did play music throughout the place and hide the speakers like this

Sneaky!

One walkway was called Needles Eye….

pretty narrow but we made it!Look!  There is that guy Gary again :).  The next place we came to was Gnome Village 

They even have boats in Gnome Village 😉

Must be cutting planks for a new boat.

Whoops, the guy on the left looks like he had too much barley pop!

The next place was the Goblin underpass  You had to duck your head a smidge to get thru there.  Then we were on top and had to cross a swinging bridgeYou know how Gary is about heights but look at that brave man, he made it all by himself!  Good job Captain!  We met a couple of women up there.  One was deathly afraid of heights and she had her hand on her friend’s shoulder as she led her thru the scary parts.  I’m not sure if she kept her eyes closed or not.  At least Gary wasn’t that bad ;).

Anyway, once we got up there, wow, what views

They say you can see 7 states from here. We brought our own binoculars so we didn’t have to pay the .25¢ per view  like the poor land lubbers.  See, boating saves you money ;).

The next place we came to was called the Fat Man’s Squeeze  I’ll tell you, if you were someone with broad shoulders, you’d never make it thru, luckily we have boaters shoulders so we made it thru no problem

 After we made it thru Fat Man’s Squeeze we came upon the Balanced rock.    It is a 100 ton rock that is  balanced on 3 corners.  I’d hate to get stuck under that thing when it gave way, although I doubt you would feel a thing when it squished you.  There was also a really cool rock overhang

Who’s that guy?

A nice water fall

an under cliff passage 

.  They also had the Enchanted Trail

This way

Another wishing well

More Gnomes

Then we came across the Stone Witch .  I think they added the pipe, how about you?  Then there was Fairyland Caverns .  It was a place I am sure the kids would love.  Full of fluorescent paint and black lighting.  They had a BUNCH of coral and HUGE quartz rocks that I am sure they wouldn’t be able to get now a days

Coral every where, along with Gnomes

Look at the size of the quartz, I bet it is the size of a basketball

Then there were the fairy tale storiesand Gnomes everywhere.  Here is another water fall, without flash

With flash.  Look at all that stuff hanging from the ceiling.  That is more coral.  Then we finally came into this large room

No Flash

With flash

When I took the picture with the flash you could see it was a large building.

The whole thing was a really nice walk, the weather was great too.  They whole thing took us about one and half hours to walk thru the two trails they had.  As I checked the website, I see during the summer they also had

Vulture

a bird show and some friendly people walking around

Ahhhh, cute puppy

They apparently had some art figures around, I only saw 2 and didn’t see this one at allWhich I thought would have been pretty cool to get a closer look at.

So, all in all, for our $20 a person, we’d say this one was the most entertaining and interesting.  Of course people have said we have rocks in our heads so that is probably why we liked this place the best :).

The next place was called Ruby Falls.  This place we judged as just being OK.  You have to remember that we have had some experience spelunking, or caving, when we were much younger.  We actually spent a weekend in a cave….slept there, ate there, explored there, pooped there, all in complete darkness, except for our miners hat that we wore.  So I learned a lot more about caves thru that experience than this one.  But we didn’t know what to expect at the time so off we went.

We started out this little adventure by following a huge RV who was going to the same place we were.  The roads we were traveling on were very narrow and curvy.  Apparently the person who was driving the RV in front of us, had never driven one before, was super cautious or a total idiot.  (But who am I to judge, I’ve never driven one before either)  He started out by driving down the middle of this little, narrow, curvy road at 10 MPH.  I assumed he drove like this to either to keep the trees from brushing, and there by scratching, the sides of the RV or to play chicken with the on coming cars.  He was doing a good job of both :).  When we finally arrived at our destination, he stopped by the parking lot, pretty much on a curve, in the middle of the narrow, curvy road.  I assumed he was trying to figure out where the heck he was going to park that big honking thing.  Of course I was the first car in a long line of cars that had backed up following him down the road.  I got an opening to pass him, pulled out, and narrowly missed side swiping our van as a car came screaming around the curve.  Whoops!  Gary had his eyes closed and was saying his Hail Mary’s.  I swooped back in, pulled into the parking lot and was able to find a parking spot pretty close to our destination.  Whew!  We made it :).

Ruby Falls at Lookout Mountain

Once we arrived, we sat on a couple of very nice beefy wooden chairs and looked at the view, taking deep breaths to calm our hearts and lower our blood pressure

Nice View

We started our tour by getting on a very quick elevator that took us down 360 feet.  The first place we stopped had very low ceilings

Watch your head!

And they did warn us to watch our heads and our feet.  Luckily, neither of us smacked our heads or fell on our butts through out this tour.

We were in a group of about 25, so taking time to take pictures along the way wasn’t really feasible as we were in the middle of the group.  The guide pointed out various points of interest

Our Guide

This white thing was the only thing they let us touch, and advised us not to touch any of the living, or wet, stalagmites that would be coming up from the floor or the stalactites that would be coming down from the ceiling, like these

Still living

or this one that is called Donkey

Donkey butt

Squint your eyes…..see it now?  They had a few other things that looked like an elephant foot, angel wings, turtle etc, etc.  But again, I am being moved along quickly so….no pictures of that stuff :(.

There were some people who threw money in some little puddles of water

Making a wish?

I wonder how much additional money they make from this?  Do people have such bad luck that they are willing to throw their coins into what ever little puddle of water they find?  Not me.  I’m one of those people who picks up pennies off the ground, the last thing I would be doing is throwing my hard-earned money into a puddle in a cave.  It’s not even a real wishing well!  What were these people thinking?

So, back to the tour.  They had some back lighting on some of the stalactites

But you could tell most of them were dead, so different from the caves we explored in Minnesota.

They took us about 1,100 feet deeper into the cave were we finally reached our destination, cause this really was all about the destination…..Ruby Falls.

Up close

A little further away with the camera

Of course they had dramatic music on while the lights changed colors.  It was pretty, but again.  So so.  One of the guys in our group commented, “Ya’d never know we were just inside a building, would ya?”    I got a chuckle out of that.  After the viewing of the falls, we made the trek back to the elevator.  Maybe if we had never been caving before it would be better.  Of course the name is Ruby Falls, not Ruby Caves, so what did I expect?

We are going to be seeing the Raccoon Mountain Caverns which is supposed to be the one of the best 10 cave tours in the country, so maybe that will be better.  Ruby Falls does have a Zip Stream ride there, Fun Forest and Gem Panning for the kids, plus another lookout to check out the scenery.  But all in all, we rate this as just a so so attraction, especially for the cost of $37.90 for the both of us.

We have a few more things we want to see here in Chattanooga.  Today looks like it will be a little cooler, only 80°, and it is a Monday, so we figure the kids are back in school.  I signed us up for 3 attractions that were in pretty close proximity.  For $97.80, we bought tickets to get into all three.  It was a little foggy in the morning and we heard we should visit these on a clear day so we had to wait until the fog lifted a little.  We visited all three in one day and here is our critique of these attractions from worst to best.

Incline Railway – First of all I must say that if we had maybe gone to this on another day, it might have been a little more interesting to us as it did have, “just a short walk away”, Point Park, which was part of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, a microbrewery that gave tours (and we were hoping free taste testing 🙂 ) and to top it all off, fresh burritos, and who doesn’t like fresh burritos?  So those things might have made the visit a little more interesting, but as it was, our poor dogs were so dang tired from all the previous walking we had been doing we settled for just a ride on Incline Railway car

Incline Railway Car

(I got this picture off the website, although I don’t know where they took this picture from cause the rail is really surrounded by trees).  Anyway, it is a mile long ride and the views from the top are quite impressive

Looking down the rail

View from the top

Another view from the top

Of course there is a recording going on inside of the car telling you all about the safety features of the cars, which by the time you get to the top and you are having all you can do not to tumble out of your seat, you are very glad they have all those safely features in place because it would be a hell of a ride back down at full speed

Whoa Baby! Hope dem dar brakes work!

Lordy, Lordy!

Once we got to the top, I could see our white van, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down there.

Can you see our van?

See the red circle?  That’s our car.  We did have to agree that the view from up there was pretty impressive.  But within ½ hour, we went up, looked around and headed down.  So for $30 for the both of us….probably wouldn’t do that again.

After a few final doctor visits we were ready to head back to the boat.  This has been the longest time we have been away from the boat.  Gary is hoping he won’t have to break out his machete to get thru the cob webs to the boat :(.

Smokie wasn’t too mad at us after all the time spent at Camp Hermes and he was exceptionally good this trip

Are we there yet Mom?

He didn’t barf at all!  That is an accomplishment for him.  We were also able to find a hotel in Mount Vernon that allowed cats for a measly fee of $10.  It was the first hotel that asked us if we had pets.  Gary, being the good Christian that he is, just couldn’t lie to the guy and admitted we had a cat.  He told the guy the cat was totally de-clawed, neutered and that we spread a sheet down under the kitty litter box to catch the litter that clings to his little sweet paws when he steps out of the box.  The guy was impressed and only charged us $10.  We figured that was a good deal and would save poor Smokie the trauma of being stuffed in a cooler.  So for those of you waiting anxiously for those pictures of the cat in the cooler, you’ll have to wait a little longer.

Smokie at the hotel

We got to the boat around noon the next day.  We didn’t have to break out the machete cause I think all the spiders just died on the boat

swim platform

Kind of hard to tell, but pretty disgusting, full of spider poop.  And you all know how hard spider poop is to get off.

Rub Rails

Euuuu, nasty, mold on the rub rails.  Mostly on one side though, the side the sun hit the most.  We also got mold on the cushions again on the fly bridge.  That will be another long and tedious job for the Captain.

Green fuzz!

Auuug!  Green fuzz all over the bow.  Holy hoot!  I have never seen the boat look this bad.   Ya know, we would see boats like this at other marinas and think, poor boat, no body loves you anymore.  Now we see it doesn’t take long to turn a pristine boat into a green fuzzy mess.  The side door was REALLY nasty.  So many dead bugs, ish!  We are lucky our neighbors didn’t cut our lines and send us out to sea.

Surprisingly, the inside was really clean.  Barely any dust, no spider webs.  I guess I got the better end of the deal.  It will take Gary days to clean the outside but not very long for the inside.  But I’ll have the task of putting all our supplies we got while in Minnesota away.  Here is the first load

First Load

Case of Honey

Case of margaritas

2nd Load which makes 2 cases of wine for me 🙂

It is funny, no matter how much stuff we bring aboard the boat it all finds a spot to get tucked away in.  I love this boat!  And not to worry, this booze should last us a few weeks or so ;).

At least the Smoke Man has taken no time as all to adjust back to life on the boat

Peek a boo!

Once we get the old girl cleaned up (the boat not me you silly people!), there is still plenty to explore here in Chattanooga plus we still have our trip to the little Tennessee planned for later in the fall so stay tuned for more exciting adventures on the Touch of Class.