Touch of Class

Gary’s dad, who was hard of hearing, would always complain that his wife could hear all sorts of noises that she would want him to investigate.  He always told Gary, “Your mother can hear the squirrels on the roof!”

Gary, as most men his age, are a little hard of hearing.  Certain tones, or noises he can’t hear.  My voice seems be just the right tone that guys can’t hear cause I make most of them say “what?” when ever I talk to them :).  Or I guess it could just be selective hearing, ya never know.

We have some noises on our boat as you would with any boat, pumps, condensers etc, etc. Some of them Gary can hear and some he can’t.  When our Raytheon depth sounder accidentally turned on and it starts making it high pitched squeal, which Gary can’t hear, I have to tell him “it is making the squealing noise again!” so he can shut it off.  Luckily we have installed a new depth sounder so I don’t have to listen that as we travel.

Then there is the chirping noise the fire/CO2 detection devices make when the battery is low.  These we installed from the factory on the boat and are hard wired in.  While we were on the hard before we left for this great adventure of ours, the devices kept chirping.  Chirp, Chirp, Chirp, Chirp!  Gary couldn’t hear a thing.  I kept telling him they are chirping again, “OK”, he says, “I’ll take care of it”.  After a few weeks of chirping the detection devices finally quit.  Thank God!  We figured they were broken and bought new ones.  Turns out the battery was too low on the boat so they were chirping because of the low battery.  Now that the battery  is fully charged, they work fine :).

So every now and again I hear the “Squirrels on the Roof” as I did the other night as we were getting ready for bed.  I was brushing my teeth and I could hear an almost honking noise that lasted a few seconds and then honked again about 15 seconds later.  As many boaters know, sound can travel thru your hull from the water so things may sound like they are coming from your boat when if fact they are coming from somewhere else. First thing I always do is check the engine room by putting my ear up to the engine room wall in our stateroom to see if I can hear it.  Which I could.

Engine Room Wall in our stateroom

So I called Gary over to listen too.  Low and behold he can hear it!  So we decide to check out the engine room to see what is making the noise.  Gary was first in line as we trooped up the stairs and headed to the back door to the engine room.  Well, it had been a really nice day that day and we had shut our air off and had the screens open, so when I went to bed that night I just closed and locked the sliding door.  So when Gary opened the back sliding door, he didn’t see the screen and walked right into it

Foot hole in screen

Darn it, his foot went right thru the screen.  Well, after a few choice words, we continued down into the engine room and sat there and listened.  Nope, no noise, it had stopped by the time we got down there.  Oh well, the boat is still floating so back to bed.    I guess it was just another “squirrel on the roof”!

My brother and his wife, who own the store, Beartrax, up by Brainerd, MN, usually take a well deserved vacation each fall.  This year they were going to Branson, MO and they asked us if we’d like to come along.  Now we have been on many memorable vacations with them

….like the time we took Gary’s pick up truck and a pop up camper down to Florida for a week.  Gary’s truck didn’t have a topper on it so Gary and Tim, my brother, built a wooden frame and used the old canvas top from our 24 foot Searay.  Talk about the Grapes of Rath :), not pretty but it fulfilled its purpose.  Now two could sit in the cab and two could sit in the back of the truck bed on old lawn chairs.  We left after work on a Friday, we were going to drive straight thru to Florida, we figured with 4 drivers it would be no sweat. While we were in Kentucky, near Louisville, we heard a “POP” from the camper.  We pulled over to side of the road to investigate and found out we had a flat tire on the camper.  No worries, we were prepared and had a spare.  We changed it and off we were again.  Not too far down the road, we heard another “POP”, darn, another tire on the camper went flat.    It was decided that Martha, my sister-in-law, and I would stay with the camper, and Gary and Tim would load up the tires and drive down the road a ways to see if they could get this tire fixed and a new tire as a spare.  Of course, that was back in the days when it was safe for two women to sit on the side of the road with a camper trailer :).  Well the boys found a place to fix the tire and buy a new spare, they were just getting back on the highway to pick us when…..”BANG!”   No, not a tire on the truck, how about the engine?  And on our brand new 1979 Ford pick up truck :(.   They used the CB to get a hold of someone who was able to call a tow truck to pick them up.  For those of you who don’t know what a CB is, it is a Citizen’s Band radio, kind of like the marine band we use on the boat.  People, mostly truckers, used to, and still do, have them in their vehicles to communicate with other trucks about road conditions, and the locations of “Smokies” (Highway Patrol) etc, etc.   So, mean while, Martha and I are watching down the highway for the truck to return and low and behold here comes a tow truck with our truck attached to it.  They pull over to the side, put the new tire on the camper, put the spare in place, hook up the camper to the truck and down the road we go to the nearest Ford dealer.  Sooooooo…it is now early Saturday morning, the manager hears our tale of wow and goes to work to see what he can find.  We, in the mean time, start looking for a hotel.  OMG!  It is Kentucky Derby weekend.  There is not a hotel to be had for under $200!  Crap!  We contemplate what to do…..should we rent a car and continue our vacation?  Should we buy a new truck and trade in the old one?  Such a dilemma.  Before we have to decide what to do, the Dealership Manager come to see us.  They have another engine block in their warehouse, but they can’t get it until Monday morning but once they get it, he assures us he will have us on the road by 5:00 Monday night.  He also says we can sleep in our pop-up camper in the parking lot.  He figures we should be safe as there is a high fence that surrounds the dealership and they have a night guard on duty.  We were very grateful.  We spooked around the area by the dealership and that night we went to bed in the camper.  I am sure we were a sight when people drove by.  The night watchman apparently wasn’t informed that people were in the camper and when one of our arms fell out thru a window, he drew his weapon and almost fired upon us.  Man alive!  That was a close one.  We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out in their customer service area watching TV, the Kentucky Derby of course, and chatting with who ever will talk with us.  The workers got to know us pretty well and with no shower, I sure they could smell us comin from 50 paces :).  But as promised, Monday, by 5:00 the truck was driving out of the shop with a new engine all ready to go, and the good part was everything was covered under warranty! What a nice bunch of people.  So we were able to continue our vacation to Florida.  We had a few more adventures like when one of the lawn chairs broke in half and we had to stop at a Wal-Mart for a new one.  Like when Martha and I were driving at night and there was a detour on the highway which we followed and ended up getting lost, like the time  we stopped at a bar for a drink and it came with some extra protein, a cock roach was floating in it!  Then the camp ground we stayed at, with a pool, we were warned to watch out for the alligator as he liked to slip into the pool for a dip at night.  Then the night we went out to dinner and left the sides up on the camper because it was a beautiful night, to come back to soggy sleeping bags and gear because it had rained while we were out to dinner.  All this in just one vacation.  And let me tell you, just about all of our vacations with Tim and Martha are filled with these memorable adventures so when they asked us to go on vacation to Branson, we said Hell Yah!

So we drove up to Branson from Mississippi and they drove down to Branson from Minnesota.  This was some place I had on my list of places I wanted to visit, so I was glad we were going.

The first night we went to see a free water show down by Lake Taneycomo.  There is shooting water and shooting fire.  The picture doesn’t do it justice.  But is by water so we don’t feel too out of place 🙂

Water show

We drove around the next day to check out the area.  A few of the buildings were quite interesting to look at…….

King Kong – front

Close up of Kong.  Nice plane Kong 🙂

Backside of Kong

Watch out!

Just the Titanic Building

Ripley’s Believe It Or Not building

Kind of cool.

We also went to a winery.  Free wine tasting anyone?  And they didn’t just give us a few tastes, they gave us about a dozen.  So it was a lot of fun, hick-up.

Yum! Free wine samples

The wine tasting room was nicely painted with murals on all the walls.  I happened to notice this fire alarm on the ceiling

Blood or what??????

Tim and I were trying to figure out if someone cut their finger while changing the battery or they just had paint on their hands?  What do you think?

Of course if you bought a case you got a 30% discount so we figured had to oblige them :).

After the winery we checked out some of the shopping there.  We stopped at a wood carving shop called Mountain Carving.  They had some pretty cool stuff

Wooden lamp and shade

This picture all carved outof a single piece of wood

Then we went into a Christmas Store, Kringles Christmas Shop.  I’ve seen Christmas stores before but never been in one.  I was impressed three full building full 0f any ornament you could possibly wanted.  My daughter would have thought she died and gone to heaven if she were in that shop.

Tim and Martha arrived at Branson a few hours earlier than we did.  Apparently if you go to visitor centers you can get some of the show tickets at a discounted price.  Tim and Martha were told if they would listen to a 2 hour presentation for a time share, we could get tickets for the 4 of us to 2 shows for about $15 each.  Now this was a REALLY good price and Tim and Martha figured they had a couple hours to kill before we got there, so what the heck.  They’d listen.  Well over 3 hours later and after 2 people talking to them trying to wear them down to buy a time share, they finally got our tickets and were out of there.  Thanks for taking one for the team guys 🙂

We saw the 2 shows at night,  one was a group call The SIX,

SIX

They were 6 brothers that sang with no instruments.  They made all the sounds of the instruments with their mouths.  Pretty impressive.  Then we saw the Texas Tenors.  They also were very good.   I think I expected more country western music from the Tenors and was surprised they sang anything from Country to Opera!  Both shows honored the Veterans, God and Country.  Good singing and showmanship at both shows. I would definitely recommend a visit to Branson.

We enjoyed our days with Tim and Martha.  Surprising, no big mishaps but the vacation with them will still be memorable and if they ask us again, we’ll say Hell Yah!

I guess I better put a disclaimer out on this website, just in case some of you might read this and think, well if Gary used it, so can I.  Or the others that know and say, man, that Gary is not too bright :).  Gary doesn’t proof any of these posts before I post them so if you read the last post about the hoist and you saw were I said he used 5100, he later told me if you used that you’d never get those railings off again.  And that might be a good thing, ya never know ;).  But after he read the post he told me he used white marine silicone .

So……readers beware of what I write, after all, I can’t tell the difference between a wench and a winch :).  Safe Boating!

Well, we finally go the hoist all finished,

Finished hoist

isn’t it pretty?  The marina did a good job on the installation but there were a few problems with it.  One of them was where the boom dropped the boat.  When it dropped the boat, it dropped it too far to the port so the boat barely fit on the cradle.  Gary figured out if the boom was raised an inch or so, it will raise the top of the boom by a foot or so which would drop the boat just where it needed to be.  So we took the lift cylinder

Lift cylinder

Close up of lift cylinder

and had that top hole drilled thru the cylinder so the pin could be placed in there. Apparently that was no easy task.  That cylinder is pretty thick.  When we picked up the finished product, the guy told us he had a tough time drilling thru it.  They did a nice job though.

Then we bought a stainless steel bolt to put in the bottom hole for extra support.  Wahla!  The boat is now able to be dropped where it fits perfectly on the cradle arms.

Ok, we are now almost there.  Now we just have to fix the fact that when the hoist swings out to drop the boat the winch hits the stainless steel railings for the seats on top.  Gary put on his thinking cap and came up with a solution.  He’d cut the railings off and make a swinging door so you could just open the door and the winch wouldn’t hit it anymore.  So how did he do that?

He started out by putting the railings back on

Put railings back on

Of course you want to make sure you goop them up good with 5100 so there are no leaks

Lots of goop means no leaks 🙂

Oops, I forgot to take a before picture of the railings, so here is a picture of the starboard side

Starboard side

Side note: I just took that picture today.  I pulled off the cushion so I could get a picture of the railings.  What do I see when I pulled off the cushions?

Coiled bumper lines

Even up where no one can see, Gary keeps things neat and orderly.  Holy Hoot!  He better not look in my kitchen drawers, he’d have a heart attack 🙂

Anyway, back to the story about the hoist…..he had to take official and precise measurements for cutting the railings

Measure twice, cut once

He cut the railings with a hack saw.  And of course the Touch of Class is well stocked with extra saw blades so it was like cutting thru butter with a knife :).  Then he had to cut them down because he was going to add some more hardware to form “T”s.  We then asked the marina if they could provide us with the up and down railings.  The did a really nice job, although we haven’t gotten the bill for that yet, Yikes!

And here is the finished product

Finished railing

It will swing open from the right side

See how it swings, and we don’t even have to take the cushion off!

It is good and sturdy so people can still lean against it and we don’t have to worry about it breaking.

So our hoist is finally all done.  The cost was what we expected.  Now we just have to go out and give it a try and have a little fun scooting around in the Litl Touch.

After 2 months of living with our kids, we decided we better head out before they threw us out like yesterdays smelly trash.  Besides, we checked the weather down south and it sounded like the worst of the heat was over :).  We certainly enjoyed the hospitality of our daughter and her husband and we’ll miss seeing them and our Grandson and Granddog everyday.

Aren’t they cute???

Before we left, we decided to let Smokey stay with his big brother in his new house till we come back in December.  We are still planning on scoping out some marinas for next summer, we figured it would be a little easier getting into hotels without having to sneak Smokey in.  He looks like he is pining away for us, doesn’t he?  Ungrateful wretch. 

We always enjoy road trips when ever we travel.  We always see so many new and interesting things on the road.  Like this…..

Follow Me Truck

The “Follow Me” truck.  We were on a two lane road and they were doing some kind of repair work.  This guys job was to lead traffic back and forth between the two stop points on the road.  What a sack job!

After 2 leisurely days of travel, we arrive back at the boat on September 3rd and guess what?  It was still floating!  We were so happy!  As we walked down the dock we did a double take…..what?  There are two Navigators there.  The slip next to us had a Navigator in it.  The people who owned it are taking their Navigator from where they bought it in Punta Gorda, FL, to their home in Arkansas.  They didn’t have any experience traveling this route so they have hired a couple of Captains to help them take the boat home.

Another Navigator

Theirs is a 51 Navigator, 2007, so a few years newer than ours.  A little different hull design and cooler sliding glass doors in the back with a big “N” as the door handle.  They also have a kitty on board by the name of Mr. Sir (I think).

Mr. Sir

This is what he looks like, too bad Smokey isn’t here to meet him, I’m sure they could have been good friends 🙂

After we were done checking out the new neighbor, we found our boat in pretty good condition.  A few bugs here and there

Dirt by cockpit

Drain by side door

and a little spider poop.  Gary sprayed the cover of the slip this spring to keep the spider population down and it looks like it worked pretty well.  We did find this bug up front.

Big Ugly Dead Bug

Man I am glad I didn’t find this thing crawlin around.  I get the willies just lookin at it!

While we were gone we kept one air unit on hoping it would keep the boat from getting stinky and full of mildew.  It worked and the inside of the boat smelled good and there was no mildew.  We did find that one of the toilet bowls was dry.  A few of our friends in Minnesota have homes down south and when they come back to Minnesota in the summer, they put a toilet plug or saran wrap over the toilet bowl to keep the water from evaporating.  I think someone needs to come out with instructions for all the stuff you should do when you leave your home for an extended period of time.  Who’d a thought the water in the toilet would evaporate.

Gary had put half of the cushions in the VIP room while the guys here were working on the hoist.  The rest he kept covered on the flybridge. When we got back he took off the covers and found this

Mildew on Cushions

It looked much worse but Gary had started to clean it before a took the picture.  So all our cushions that were covered looked like this.  Crap!  He just got done cleaning them before we left.  I guess this is another lesson learned.  Either take your covers off or take the cushions in if your going to be gone during the hot and humid summer.  Luckily he found a cleaner and a mildew block by 3M to put on after he cleaned them.  Hopefully the block will do the trip to keep the mildew away.  It was sure a bugger to get it off.

We decided we better also look under our Bimini which also had a cover on it.  No mildew but it had mud bees that had started to build a nest in there.  Luckily they were gone and just the mud pack was left, no harm, no foul there.  Whew, dodged a bullet there 🙂

It took us a week but we have finally gotten the boat ship shape and we are back to our regular routine.  Gary, being the good husband that he is, helps me with the dirty dishes.  Sometime I wash and he dries and sometimes he washes and I dry.  Can you tell who dried these dishes?

Dry dishes all ready to be put away

We have a few more weeks before we leave on a road trip to Branson, MO with my brother and his wife.  We’ll keep you posted on how that goes, in the mean time we are hanging out at Aqua, at G52.

G52

We were able to visit my brother and his wife up north at their store, Beartrax.  Beartrax always has quite the influx of interesting people that I love to watch and talk to when I visit their store.

Apparently the horse flies are exceptionally bad this year.  People up there have thought of interesting and innovative ideas to cope with that problem.  One woman came in with a bee keeper had on.  The netting kept the flies from biting her head as she walked around her property.  Another gentleman came in to pick up a few supplies.  He had made some additions to his ball cap

Hat with fly paper on it

See how he has pinned the fly paper to his ball cap?

Dead Flies

What are those spots on the paper?  Oh Gross!  Dead Flies!  Well I guess his innovation is working.  Hopefully the flies won’t fall off into his dinner :).

We went to the Hot Rod Show at North St. Paul.  They apparently do this every Friday night during the summer.  Here are some pictures of the cool rides:

We’ll be here for another month or so.  Pat closes on his new house tomorrow so we’ll be busy helping him square that away a little bit.  We have been enjoying the hospitality of our daughter and her patient husband and visiting family and friends while we are here. When we return to Mississippi at the end of August, we’ll be taking a few road trips to check out the marinas on the Tennessee river.  We are hoping to explore that area next summer after we return from wintering at Orange Beach Marina again.

Our first year on the boat is almost over.  So far so good.  We just celebrated 36 years of marriage and only 1 or 2 arguments over the year.  We think we’ll keep doing it for a while longer :).

We have been here in Minnesota for over a month now.  Our gills are closing up and our web feet are turning back into normal feet.  I don’t rock anymore when I am sitting at my computer doing our blog.  Hopefully we won’t forget how to drive the boat, I am getting kind of itchy for a little exploration.  Enjoy the rest of the summer!

Good Moto

Turns out our daughter just sold her house in June and bought a new one.  Well, we decided this would be a good time to visit Minnesota, besides, she bought a house big enough so we could have our own room

Our Room at Jenny’s

Kool huh?  They lived in our basement when they were kids and now we are living in their basement.  Hopefully we won’t have to sneak in at night :).

Visiting in July and August was also a good chance to get out of the heat and humidity of Mississippi.  We had heard that it could get very hot and humid there, so we left the boat in Iuka, Mississippi and set off for Minnesota on June 25th.  I think Smokey has finally adjusted to the car rides…..no barfing this time.  Good kitty!

We arrived back at Sunnyside Marina in Stillwater, MN on June 27th, the day of the new house closing.  We came to the marina and found the river was flooded.

Gas Dock Ramp, Wow!

They had to set the gas dock ramp on boat stands to keep it from breaking

Pier One

You can see the river is still over some of the bushes (bottom left) as I took this picture from the parking lot.  I don’t recall the river ever being this high, this late in the year.  Crazy winter and crazy spring/summer for people in Minnesota.  I guess that is why I moved south, and none to soon, we really dodged a bad winter.

After the closing on the new house, we helped them move in

Stuff has arrived

Just put it any where

It wan’t long before everything was moved in and we could finally kick back and have a brew 🙂

Ready for that well deserved brew!

We were hoping it wouldn’t be all work and no play while we were here and luckily a few days later we were invited to a costume party.  Here we were homeless and we had to dig up a costume.  Off to Goodwill we went and had great success.  Not the best costumes but they would have to do.  The night of the party was beautiful.  Not to hot, light breeze and we arrive at the 80 foot houseboat.  Man, it was like a floating house.  The fun times were to be had on the upper deck.  And what good times were had!

Costume Party

The lovely red headed wench in the background was the host of the party.  She had a very deep voice and a hairy chest, but what a lovely wench he made :).  Of course the big black and silver Bubba keg next to the Biker Chick on the bar was mine.  Have Bubba will travel!

Costumes-GI Joe, Prom King and the Joker

Black Widow Spider and her Spider Killer

Very creative people, love the costumes!

There was plenty of dancing

Biker and Prom people swaying to the music

And some very good Karaoke singers!

You go Jeannie and Stewardess

While we were out cruzin the St. Croix we passed by the Yacht club beach

Yacht Club Beach

Yes…..we purposely run our boat aground!  Then we run anchor lines from our stern, one on the port, one on the starboard side, and plant the anchors in the sand.  We then run power cords up on the beach to the electric boxes so we can plug in the boats.  Hell of a great place to have fun and raise the kids.  You should try it sometime 🙂

Well, we howled till the moon rose, wished everyone a hearty good night and I drove us home.  See the Captain had partaked in a little too much barley pop to be turning the wheel over to him that night.  It was a great party though!

Hopefully there will be some more adventures while we visit family and friends.  Stay tuned!

Well, here it is almost the end of June.  They say summer has arrived here.  The weather is already hot (for me) and they say low 90’s is normal for this time of year (good thing we plan on getting out of here for July and August, the REALLY hot months of the summer).  We have backed our boat into the slip and our bow faces East, by the time the temperature steams up in the afternoon, we are in the shade.  We have been lucky to have a little breeze over our bow so we are able to sit out there and sit outside a little.  We are in for a few more days of rain so I figured this would be a good time to update the website.

We visited another point of interest a few days ago.  On the 19th we visited the Tennessee River Museum which is located in Savannah Tennessee, which is about 18 miles from where we are located.  We do most of our shopping in Savannah.  They have a Lowes, a Wal-mart and a grocery store called Krogers, so it is all pretty handy.

The museum we visited in Savannah had quit a lot of information in it, it covered a large period of time and was bigger than it appeared from outside.  It cost $3 per person to get in and when you left, you could have a free jaw breaker as a treat :).

Here are some pictures of the museum and I have posted more on the “Points of Interest” page.

Tennessee River Museum

Arrow Heads

More Arrow Heads

Big Arrow Head display

It is something to think that they made all these various arrow heads by beating them with a rock.  Think you could have survived out there?  That would mean no TV, no cell phone, no golf and, heaven forbid, no Facebook.  OMG!

When we left Sunnyside, we had our little boat

Little Touch in slip.

put on top of the boat right in hopes that we could get the hoist installed here at Aqua. As we traveled people would walk by our boat looking at the little boat on the roof with puzzling looks on their faces, than ask “How do you get that down?”, Gary would respond, “That’s our life raft, so when the boat sinks, we just jump in”.  That really threw them for a loop.  Well the marina here has been working on getting our hoist installed and after a few missteps, they have finally completed their mission.

New Hoist

The person who installed it was quite meticulous and had to ponder the various problems that arose.  We bought the hoist from a company in Canada, so that in itself presented a few problems and some extra costs.  As you can see though, it is quite beefy

Beefy Davit

They had to build a custom base for the davit as the pole didn’t quite touch the floor

Davit Base

Here are a few more pictures of it

Remote control  Wench, I mean Winch!  How Sweet!

Where davit is run through roof

This was another problem, they had to made a special shim so the hoist was level, see that white strip between the hoist and the roof of the boat?

Hoist from the rear of the boat

All in all, it looks good.  We haven’t received the bill for the labor yet.  I am making sure Gary’s life insurance is paid up in case he has a heart attack when we get the bill 🙂

Today we’ll be putting the little boat back on the big boat so we’ll see how it works.  If you don’t see another update here, you’ll know the boat tipped over and we sank, so keep your fingers crossed 🙂

We’ll be traveling back to Minnesota in a few days.  Our daughter Jenny has (hopefully) closed on her new home by then so we will have some place to stay.  Otherwise we may be camping out in our van with the cat :(.  He does like to stretch out and not share very well.  Hopefully we’ll not have any encounters with Mr. Deer again.  I don’t think our insurance company would appreciate it.

Don’t know if we’ll be updating while we are in Minnesota, but you never know.

It’s Summertime now, be sure to enjoy it!

Well, we had another storm roll thru again last night on the 9th.   The rain was first blowing so hard it got our windshield wet then the winds switched and the rain was getting the back of the boat wet!  The power went out just when the rain started.  Gary suggested we play Domino’s (Chicken Foot).  Will wonders never cease?  I guess desperate times call for desperate measures 🙂  I even let him win ;).

The next day the workers came to work on our boat again and they said this is unusual to have so many storms.  Holy Hoot!  Must be those Damn Yankees tryin to live down south!

On the 12th the weather was pretty nice and it wasn’t too hot so we decided to visit the Waverley Mansion.  Back in the day it was 100,000 acres and had 5,000 slaves.  Here is link to some history on it http://www.exploresouthernhistory.com/waverly.html

When we got there I took some pictures of the outside

Mansion Entrance

Of course we were greeted by their security dog

Security dog

Here he is playing dead, the sly old dog 🙂

Security dog playing dead

They also had the highly trained stealth cat, Scratchy

Scratchy the Guard Cat

Once we passed security, I was disappointed to find out they wouldn’t allow any pictures.  I found the inside ones on the internet (sneaky huh?).  When you walk in you notice the very high ceiling

High ceiling

The house was fashioned after the white house with the domed roof.  There were two doors facing each other to enter the home and along each side of the doors was a double staircase

Double Staircase

There were 4 floors.  Three of the floors had 4 rooms, 2 to the left, 2 to the right

Floors

We had a guided tour of the 4 bottom rooms, a sitting room, a dining room, a smoking room and the music room.  The home was left abandoned for quite some time after the civil war.  The people that own it now, the Snows, lived in it for a quite a while after they bought it.  They were also antique dealers so the rooms we were shown had a lot of original pieces from the home and antiques the Snow’s purchased for the home.  The 2nd floor held four bed rooms.  There was rumored that a child ghost lived in one of the bedrooms and would say “MaMa”.  Ohhhhh, spookie :).  The 3rd floor just has storage in it and the 4th floor gave you access to the very top and the best view in the house

Top of Mansion

They had a 20 foot pit where they put their ice.  It was hauled in from up north someplace.  It is pretty grown over now

Ice Pit

They did have Peacocks that were in cages.

Peacocks in their cage

Did you know they lose those beautiful feathers after mating season is over?  I bet men are glad they don’t loose their hair each time mating season is over, heehee.

They have some huge Magnolia trees on their property, they say one is over 250 years old

Magnolia Tree

They look like good climbing trees.  I posted a few more pictures on the “Points of Interest” page if you want to look for them.

It was a 2 hour drive from where we were but it was very interesting.  BTW, if you decide to visit it, as you are traveling down the dirt road and you see the boat ramp in front of you and a mailbox on the right hand side that says Waverley, take a left…..you have arrived!

June has been pretty warm here.  But the humidity seems to be down during the day and higher at night which is OK cause we just turn on the air.  We have been able to cool the boat with just one air conditioner on at a time.  We were pleasantly surprised with our electric bill for May, only $37!  That is quite a difference from when we were here in November and December.  I guess the electric heaters really do suck electricity.  Lesson learned :).

When it rains here, it really storms.  We had a big storm roll thru here on Thursday and the wind was blowing so hard it got the back of our boat wet.  That means the rain blew in about 55 feet from the other side of our covered dock.  Here is a picture from a storm last night about 9:30 P.M.

Lightening storm at 9:30 at night

Kind of hard to see as I took this with my phone but the 3 blue squares are the lighted up night sky.  I was looking out the back of our boat to the dock behind us.  And man, was it loud under those covers.  It is something to watch.  Apparently there was a big boat that was anchored out and his boat was struck by lightening, took out all of his electronics.  He had to be towed in by BoatUS.  Glad that wasn’t us and really…..didn’t he listen to the weather????

As I mentioned before, we are having the marina install a new hoist for us.  Gary is going nuts cause they had to take off the railing and cushions and the fly bridge is pretty messy(by Gary’s standards :))

What a mess

Here is where the hoist is going

We rented a spot for the little boat while the hoist is being installed so we can at least use it.  Ours is the one with the black cover.  We are using one of the little lifts at the end of our dock where people normally put their jet ski’s.

Little boat T/T Touch of Class

We have several places we want to explore around here.  One that is relatively close by is the Shiloh National Military Park.  This was a great place to go and it is free to the public, which makes it even better.

Shiloh National Park

Here is a link that better explains what the battle at Shiloh was all about http://www.nps.gov/shil/historyculture/shiloh-history.htm   This is supposed to be one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil war.

We went first to the visitor center to see what’s happening.  Every hour on the hour they have a movie about what happened at the park.  We would suggest you watch this movie first as it really explains everything so when you are looking around, things will make more sense.  They also have several demonstrations around the park for you to go to, all free.

The park is pretty big and it has markers thru out the park showing which battalion was where and at what time during the various battles.  They have a driving tour which we took.  (It would take you quite a while if you were to walk it, and you dang well better be in tip top shape with a good bladder :)).  Here are some pictures I took and I have posted more on the “Points of Interest” page.

Book store

Gates to the Cemetery

This is a picture from land of the Tennesee river.  We passed this spot on our way down with the boat

We passed this way on the river on the trip down

All in all the Shiloh park was a good way to spend a few hours and learn a little about the Civil war.

Back at the marina……you guys complain about your dandelions in your yard. Look at these, they must be a foot and a half tall

Dandelions at Marina

Here is a shot of the pool

Pool at Aqua

It is not heated but you don’t need it when the sun is beating down on it.  It can be pretty empty during the week, we hear too much screaming during the weekend so we avoid it.  🙂

That’s it for now, we’ll update when we do some more exploring.  I think summer is finally here, although I heard it was in the 50’s in Minnesota :(. TTFN.