Touch of Class

We belong to the AGLCA, American Great Loop Cruisers Association.  Although we have just completed part of the loop they have some interesting information that they share. Each day we get at least one E-mail where people ask questions, get answers, discuss the pros and cons of certain boating items and even talk about danger on the great loop.  One such danger was a rock pile at North Myrtle Beach in South Carolina.  Here is the excerpt from the news article ”

The “Rock Pile” is a man-made canal-like section of the AICW, officially known as the Pine Island Cut, running between Little River and Waccamaw River. The canal is narrow and lined with submerged rocks and a rock shelf, just a foot or two below the water’s surfce.
When the USACOE was building this portion of the AICW in the 1930′s they encountered a sold shelf of granite. The Corps simply blasted through this obstruction, but, over the years, the soft silt above and below these rocky outcropping has washed away, making the canal now appear wider than it really is. Also, over the years, many portion of the rock shelf have broken off, and left all sort of underwater rocks waiting to trap keels and underwater hardware.
Cruisers are urged to hold as close to the mid-width of the Pine Island Cut as possible, and announce their presence on VHF in case large commercial traffic is approaching, which could force you out of the channel’s mid-line and onto the “rocks,” especially at high tide when the rocks are fully submerged.”

Then here is someone who didn’t heed the warning

Whoops

Here is what the news article said about them “A 42′ sport fish boat was traveling about 18 knots and was trying to pass another boat – due to each others wake he ended up on top of a rock shelf – all five people on the boat were unhurt.”  Yup, a good lesson learned, glad it was learned by someone else and not us 🙂

The marina here does a lot of work on boats.  We are having them install a hoist for us.  They do some wonderful work here.  They have been working on this boat, that used to belong to Alan Jackson (he’s a country singer in case you didn’t know who he is) for 5 months, getting it all prettied up.  It is an aluminum hulled Berger.  Only the cabin structure is made out of wood, the rest is all aluminum.

70 foot boat

Stern of the boat

The pictures, as usual, don’t do it justice.  It is a oldie but a goodie.  We don’t know what it looked like when it came in but it sure is pretty now :).  Here are some more pictures of it as it was gassing up at the gas dock to leave.

Lady J

Wow!  May is over with!  Memorial weekend here was quite an eye opener.  We put some chairs out on our bow so we could get the best view of the all the boats.  This place is packed.  Every empty slip is full with 2 to 3 little boats tied and there are people coming and going.  The docks have quite the traffic on them.  There’s a boat kitty corner from us.  No one has been on it so far but there was a few people on it this weekend.  About 9:30 on Saturday night I saw a reflection of flames, I turned around and I could see flames shooting up on the end of the finger where this boat was.  Holy Hoot!  What the heck is going on?  I shot out of my chair and went on the back deck.  There was this guy standing by what I assumed was his grill with flames 4 feet in the air.  He was cussin and swearing.  I asked him if he wanted a hose……I don’t think he heard me.  After a little bit his fire got under control and I went back in.  I bet his dinner was real tastee, Hee Hee 🙂

That weekend we saw 5 boats being towed in.  They seemed to tow them close to the gas dock and then just let them go and had them fend for them selves.  One young kid got towed in and after that person dropped him off, he paddled around for a bit until another boat came and towed him to the gas dock.  Crazy.

Now we see why they have 6 people working the gas dock.  People were waiting in line to get to the gas dock to fuel up.  Cha-ching!

The parking lot was packed, not a spot to be found except in the overflow parking area.  We’re glad we didn’t have to move our car at all that weekend :).  We’ll see if it continues to be busy here after Memorial weekend is over.

We hope you all had a safe and enjoyable Memorial weekend and the month of May.  Time flies when your retired 🙂

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.

Today is May 1st (WOW, it’s May already.  18 more days and we’ll be living aboard for a year!), Thursday, and we are still here.  Looks like we’ll be here till Sunday. Looking at the long range weather, it should be nice for the next 10 days.  Hopefully we’ll make it home before any more bad weather hits us.

The storm on Tuesday petered out up here but where we were, at Orange Beach Marina, they were hit with a lot of rain and flooding.  They are about 12 miles west of Pensacola, where they got hit hard with a lot of rain.  Here is a picture taken last night at Orange Beach by one of our friends down there

Orange Beach Marina

It is a little hard to see but those pilings there are holding up the dock….that is underwater.  The water was up about a foot higher but has already gone down.  Another friend who live on their boat told us that the water was almost up to the power boxes and that the boxes were smoking a little before they finally turned off the electric.  Quite a few of the boats there are Sport Fisher boats with really high “tuna towers” that are in covered slips.

Sport Fishing boat with “tuna tower”

The docks there don’t float so boats like this don’t have a lot of head room when the water raises.  I would imagine they might have had to move some of those boats out of their covered slips.

Down here we are just hanging around waiting for the water to go down.  Every day we check to see when the river will be down to normal, looks like Sunday now.  This is what we would have to dodge if we left today

70 Foot Tree in River

Here is what the gas dock looks like today.  We pulled in here Friday night to get more fuel, no room for us to pull in today.

Gas Dock

The debris is just swirling around and filling up the harbor.

Here is some poor unfortunate animal.  What do you think it is?  See the little claws?  Kinda gross :).  We like to make sure we cover all the unusual items on a trip so you can get the full effect of travel on the river :).

Bloated Animal

This boat came to the gas dock today

Cruise Boat

We talked to some people that were on it.  The boat stopped at Demopolis to refuel and the passengers got off to walk around.  They told us they got on at New Orleans.  Then they traveling up thru the Mobile Bay, and are heading up the TennTom, down the Ohio river and then down the Mississippi river back to New Orleans, a 16 day trip.  I’ve seen the Mississippi Queen boats but never a boat like this.  Looks like fun.  Here is their website in case anyone is interested http://www.blountsmallshipadventures.com/

Remember the snakes I mentioned?  Here is one swimming by the ramp we walk over to get to the parking lot

Snake ISH! 3 Feet long

I’ve posted a few more pictures on the More Pictures page of the town of Demopolis.

Stay tuned……

Today is Monday and, thankfully, the storms have not been that bad yet but supposedly, the worst is yet to come.  We’ll keep praying that they are more north of us and we don’t get anything too bad where we are.

We have been joined by a large Hataris that is also traveling north and the sail boat people came down yesterday and it looked like they stocked up their boat.  We think they might be leaving after the storm too.  Later in the day we had a Tollycraft come in and sometime during the night another sail boat slipped in.  Looks like we are all waiting for a good sailing day.

Apparently with all the storm watching we have been doing we haven’t been paying enough attention to the cats needs.  About 4 in the morning I heard something crash to the floor.  It didn’t sound like anything broke so I decided to leave it go till I got up.  In the morning I found Smokie’s water dish on the floor.  Guess he was letting us know he needed more water.  Smart, or impatient, kitty :).

The storms last night were quite intense but we seemed to be just on the outskirts of the really bad tornado stuff.  There is another round of storms tonight but the weather is suppose to clear by Wednesday.  Thought we could take off then but I guess not.  The water levels have some other ideas

18 feet in 3 days, yah, I guess we better stay put.

As we continue our travels up river we notice how far the water has dropped

See how far the water was up?

You can see how the bottom of the trees doesn’t have any color.  This is where the water level was a few weeks ago.  We are very happy it has dropped, makes it a lot easier for us.  I think so far, we have had less debris on the river than we had coming down.  Lets hope this continues for the rest of our return voyage.

We had a easy sail with little debris and we made it to the 2nd anchorage around 4:00. After dinner I did get Gary to play Dominos Chicken Feet.  Hey Mikey!  He likes it!  Oh boy, that is 2 games I can get him to play.  By the time I am done I may have a Canasta partner :).

We’re all settled in for the night and it was getting pretty dark when a guy in duck boat came into our anchorage and started shining a light into the trees.  Keep in mind that the water is still about 10 feet over where it should be so all you could see is a bunch of trees sitting in water.  There is a boat ramp behind us so I figured maybe he was going there.  He passed the area of the boat ramp and kept going, shining his light from shore to shore.  A few minutes passed and I heard a gun shot.  What the hell?  Gary tells me not to worry, he is probably hunting something.  Sure he is ;).  What are you hunting when the water is so high?  I’ll feel a lot better when they guy leaves this anchorage.  I’m locking the doors and sleeping with my gun tonight :).

We woke the next morning.  Luckily no one shot us in the middle of the night :).  The bottom was extremely muddy, Gary was not happy about that.  We had to put out two anchors last night and both are coming up really muddy.  Gary is having to use the fresh water hose to clean them off.  Looks like we’ll have to conserve on water as we have another anchorage tonight to get thru.  That means no washing of dishes or showering.   Hopefully we don’t draw too many flies as we travel :).

We have a short drive today, only 45 miles to a place called Bashe Creek.  We got thru Coffeeville Damn today with no problem.  The new docking stick I made worked out real well.  It was originally a window cleaner/squeegee.  I just unscrewed the cleaner part and kept the hard plastic stick.  It can even double as a billy stick if need be 🙂

As we were traveling and following our Bread Crumbs on the Garmin, we noticed some gaps in them.  Here is a picture of the Garmin with a gap in it.

Garmin and our Bread Crumbs

See the little dashes?  Those are our Bread Crumbs from when we came down in January.  See the break in the Break Crumbs?  We must have met a  barge on that corner.  As we were traveling with one engine on the way down, when we’d run into a barge, we’d have to start the other engine and when we did that we had to shut down the Garmin while we started up the other engine.  We had to do that because of the power serge from starting the engine shut off the Garmin and I didn’t think that was very good for it.  So we shut off the Garmin before we start the engine. That’s what caused the break in our Bread Crumbs.  Pretty neat huh?

There were a bunch of swallows following our boat and dive bombing right in front.  We must have been kicking up bugs and they were having a feast.  We also saw this bird

Bird – Swallow Tailed Kite

It would dive right into the water and then fly away, kind of like the pelicans.  I’ve never seen a bird like this before.  Pretty cool though.

We noticed some trees with new vines on them.  Last time they were all dead and brown.  Much prettier now

Vines on Trees

We’ve only seen one boat on our trip

Our traveling buddy

They passed us like we were standing still.  Well…..we are sipping fuel and they are guzzling it. (More about him later ;))

Here is a dock that got washed away in the flood, watch that first step…..

Broken Dock

Well we got to Bashe Creek around 2:00.  We had taken our time as we knew we didn’t have far go go.  Big mistake.  The anchorage is way too narrow for us.  There was a guy on the shore that was fishing.  He was looking as us like “Do you really think you are going to fit in there?”.  Crap!  There are no more anchorages that Gary feels comfortable using from here to Demopolis.  That means a 70 mile run in 5 hours and we have to get thru a lock.  So much for sippin the diesel, time to start chugging it :(. Not much choice, so we push the girls up to 2400 and we are traveling at 16.4 knots.  This is the fastest I  have traveled on the boat for this long of a time.  And guess what?  The cat is loving it!  He is sprawled out on the salon floor.  Who’d a thunk?

Our one and only boat, Off Call, ended up staying a consistent 1 1/2 ahead of us.  He was quite surprised to see us behind him on one of the straight aways. We both made it to the lock by 5:45 and we were out by 6:05.  We both pulled up to the gas dock at Demopolis.  It turns out they were are a couple of guys doing a delivery from Dustin, Florida to Chattanooga, Tennessee.  They had ordered a part for their generator and needed to pick it up at Demopolis.  We both got a slip for the night.  We were tied up in our slip by 7:00.  After traveling our longest stretch of 113 miles,  we decided to take a break  and stay at Kingfisher Bay Marina an extra day.

One thing I did learn about the way we usually travel is that we are able to take pictures, take notes, and enjoy the experiences so I can have some interesting little tid bits for the blog.  Otherwise while we were beating feet to get here, all I had time for was to sit next to Gary and watch the instruments and look for debris in the water.  No time for sight seeing going that fast.  We would have missed all those interesting sights on the rivers.  Besides, it’s the journey, not just the destination and after all, we are retired :).

The next morning we looked at the weather and found there is a really nasty weather system heading our way and it will be hitting here Sunday and staying thru Tuesday or Wednesday.  As our next stop is an anchorage, we have decided to play it safe and stay till the storms, three of them, pass thru.  We are hoping there won’t be too much flooding by the time it is done.

So I am sitting here, updating the blog and listening to the worst lightening storm I have even been in in quite some time.  Lots of sky to ground lightening strikes.  Big booms.  The cat is hiding in his window again.  The lightening strikes seem really close.  Good thing we have a sail boat next to us to serve as our lightening rod.  They’ll get hit first before us :).

Well, I’ll stop for now and update later as we get back underway to our ultimate destination, Aqua Yacht Harbor.  Stay safe and have a good week.

We left Orange Beach on the 22nd as planned.  We checked the weather, the flood levels and the waves on Mobile Bay.  All looked good.

Bye Kay and Jim, thanks for the farewell dinner and we’ll see you on your travels north.

Kay and Jim

We left Orange Beach at 7:10.  Following the markers and our “bread Crumbs” (for those of you who don’t remember, the bread crumbs is the tracking our boat made on its travels down to Orange Beach on our Garmin).  Gary, shouldn’t we be on the other side of that marker?  Whoops!  I guess we have to get back into the program and pay more attention.  A few extra electronics to look at on the way back.  Hopefully they will come in handy.

We were traveling along at our usual pace when we were passed by a big sport fisherman, he slowed down for us but his wake was still huge.  Knocked over a few lamps and opened a few drawers…..more practicing needed on hitting those wakes.

We make it to Mobile Bay and the waters are pretty smooth.  I guess little Smokie has to get his sea legs again, he puked up his breakfast.  Poor Smokie :(.  We are trying the new short cut we learned about, it is suppose to cut off 10 miles.  That will save some fuel and time.  We even got to use our auto pilot, which is exactly like it sounds.  We set a course, hit a button and the boat drives it self staying on the course we have set.  When you are in rough seas, using auto pilot makes for a smoother ride.

Our first stop was Dog River Marina where we stayed the night and filled up on fuel.  We got a good price there.  We also pumped out.  It took as long to pump out as it did to put on fuel.  I guess we had a lot of poop to pump 🙂  We left Dog River on the 23rd at 7:00.  It is a little foggy out but the visibility is pretty good

A little foggy leaving Dog River Marina

Unfortunately the closer we got to the Mobile Bay Harbor, the foggier it got.  This boat came out of the fog at us

Ship coming out of Mobile Bay Harbor

Before we left Orange Beach, Gary spent several days installing the AIS (Automatic Identification System) that we bought before we left.  An AIS system allows us and other boats that have AIS to “see” the boats on their navigation systems,  several miles away.  If you register your AIS, your boat name and vessel type will also appear on the blip on the screen that is your boat.  We figured after meeting a few tugs on the sharp corners of the TennTom, we’d get it installed to save on some gray hairs.

After much swearing, bleeding and yelling, he finally got the wires strung between the bottom station and the arch where the antenna was.  We had to install a separate antenna for the AIS.  I offered to help but when it was apparent I was more hindrance than help, I made myself scarce until he was done.  Then I fixed him a drink and bandaged him up 🙂

Well anyway, back to the story……all the ships in the Harbor were “seeing” the Touch of Class on their AIS systems.  The big ship that came out of the fog called us on channel 16, the hailing channel on the marine band, and told us other ships were trying to get a hold of us and we should switch to channel 13 to monitor the activity in the harbor.  He also told us there was an out going ship behind him that was trying to get a hold of us.  We switched to channel 13.  We were hailed by a Navel vessel.  By this time I was sitting on the fly bridge with the binoculars so I could be a second pair of eyes for Gary.  The fog was really thick now and the binoculars weren’t any help.  Luckily Gary had installed that AIS, that was really helping him.   I told Gary to turn on the Radar which would show us other objects not being picked up by the AIS.  Gary was busy watching the all the navigation systems to make sure we didn’t run into anything, to keep us in the channel and stay out of everyone’s way and make sure we don’t run into anything.  The Navel vessel told us to go on his ones, which means we should pass to the right of him.  Gary told the guy we were hugging the reds, which were on the right side of the channel.  We are going along real slowly, all of  a sudden a 150 foot Navel vessel is crossing our bow!  Holy Smokes!  I yelled at Gary to make sure he saw it.  Needless to say both Captains hit the breaks and threw their boats in reverse.  Gary called him and told him to go ahead, the Navy boat said, no we should go ahead.  The Navy boat turned more to his right so we could pass on his ones.  What the heck?????  You’re a Navy boat…..what were you doing crossing our bow?  Crazy.  We inched along looking visually and at the navigation systems to make sure we didn’t have anymore close calls.  As we got closer to shore the fog lifted and we could finally see the City of Mobile.  Whew!  We made it.  That was an adventure I don’t care to repeat again.

Picture taken as we left the fog. This thing is several stories high

City of Mobile

I have posed some more pictures on the more picture page.

The current wasn’t too bad traveling up the Black Warrior but we still used two engines so we could make some time.  We arrived at our first anchorage at 5:00, Alabama Cut Off.  Here is what it looks like today

Alabama River Cut off Today in April

Here is what it looked like in January.

Anchorage looking out bow

Quite a difference huh?  Can you tell it is spring?

We woke up at 6:00 to in dense fog.  Boo!  Looks like we will be sitting here a while.  The picture below is looking out to the river.  You can’t even see the other bank which is not that far away.

Dense Fog at Alabama Cut off anchorage

So we had to hang around here till it cleared off at 9.  We’ll have to change our plans because Bobby’s Fish Camp is not doable today.  We’ll try a new anchorage, Old Lock One it’s called.  That is one thing about traveling by boat, you have to be flexible and have a back up plan and don’t have a schedule that can’t be changed.  Ahhhhh, the life of a live aboard :).

This blog will probably contain a bunch of Victor this and Victor that, so those of you who might not be interested, I thought I’d give you a spoiler alert :), says the proud Mema.  Besides, you’ve seen enough of our ugly mugs, might as well add some new material.

The crew arrived on the 31st.  After his long travels, Victor promptly took a nap on Papa’s and Smokie’s favorite couch  That was so nice of them to share.

April 1st was a busy day. We took them over to see the alligator on one of our trails.   They were in luck and the alligator was out.  She made a bee line over to where we were with Victor.  I suppose she was thinking she had a tastee little meal there.  Good thing they have the fencing up, we split anyway, didn’t want to try to out run the gator.

In the afternoon we took our first ride out to the Gulf, the weather was stupendous and the seas were mild.

We made it to the Gulf

Gulf at last 🙂

We spent all day anchored out in a beautiful bay called Terry Cove.  Love to have a condo there.  After our big day out to sea, it was time for Victor’s first taste of food.  Carrots!  Yummy!

Victor’s first taste of real food, so to speak 🙂

And then it is bath time for the big boy

Bath time on the Touch of Class

On the 2nd, it was off to the beach.  It was a little windy today but it sure didn’t stop the people from coming out.

Busy on the beach

The waves were coming in and there were a few boys surfing on the waves

Waves coming into the beach

We sat under the walkway so Victor and I could stay in the shade and the rest of the sun worshipers could sit in the sun.

Victor and Mema sitting in the shade

We walked almost every day on the trails that are near the marina.  Here is a family photo of the handsome Love family

Love Family

We went back to the beach again on the 3rd and this time, Victor got to put his little toes in the sand.  He did much better than his Mama.  She screamed when we put her feet in the sand.  Good Boy Victor!

Victor’s first walk on the beach

The next day we went to The Warf Marina.  We strolled along and looked at all the boats there.  This is kind of a cool marina as it is located right on the ICW (Inter Coastal Waterway), so there is a lot of traffic to watch as it passes by, from barges to million dollar yachts.

A stroll at The Warf Marina

We even stopped for lunch

Mom and Victor at lunch

We tried to go to the beach the next day, we thought we’d beat the rain, no such luck

Here comes the rain

Boy is it raining

After we dried out we decided to dress up and take the kids out to eat

Happy Victor

Sad Victor

Does the tie look familiar?  Smokie let him borrow his 😉

I’ll have a steak please and some teeth to go along with it 🙂

Daddy and Victor, both snappy dressers.  Love the hats

Victor giving a High Five

We went to get pizza at a place where we could walk to, here is a picture of the boys on the way back to the marina

All three boys

Later that night we played a game called Tick, Victor caught on real quick

Victor the card shark

We went to this place call Homeport Marina.  Right by the marina is a place called Lulu’s.  We didn’t eat there but I did use their head.  What a cool place 🙂

Lulu bathroom stall

Lulu bathroom stall

I know….I’m weird 🙂

Off to the beach again…can you sense a theme here?  We love the beach.

The Love Feet

Ahoy me mates, prepare to be boarded

We had a really good visit with them.  Everyone seemed to have a good time and Victor wasn’t too crabby, only when he had good reason.  We saved a few places to take them to the next time they are in town.

The last day :(, everyone is sad but we have to squeeze in one more attraction, the lighthouse at the Naval base

Light house

They had a gift shop so we had to check it out.  Watch out…it’s Pirate Victor

Arrrggggh

Gary decided he didn’t want to climb the light house after he checked out the stairs so he and Victor waited while the rest of us went up

Gary and Victor wait it out

Almost to the top, here is a view down the stairs, I see now why Gary decided not to come.

View down

There was one point where a mom and dad and their two kids were coming down as we were going up.  The mom and one kid were scared poopless.  They didn’t want to release their hold on the only railing, we didn’t either.  Jenny sat down so they could hold on to the railing above her and I hung on the the center pole, for dear life I might add.  Shhzze, that was a close one.  Right as we got to the bottom a whole bus load of kids started up the top.  Man, we made it out of there just in time.

The views from the top were spectacular!

Who is that brave sole?

View from the top

We even found another beach we could check out 🙂

Beach at the light house

By the time we were done with all our exploring, I think Victor had had enough

Sooooo tired

We all had a good time but it was time to take them to the airport.  Bye-Bye you three, till next time.

We arrived back at the boat safe and sound.  Man, is it quiet here 🙂

Turns out the other pets around here are dressing up…..Smokie thought he better step up his game

Dashing Smokie with his Bow Tie

It is raining cats and dogs here, I mean we are having a squall (that there is sailor talk for raining cats and dogs) so I thought I’d update the blog.  We have still been exploring Orange Beach and the surrounding area.  3 of our new boat friends here at the marina have left for their homes in Tennessee.  They have run into severe weather and frost and ice on their boats while they travel north.  We are hoping it will warm up by the time we leave around the middle of April.

We were invited to visit our friends Chuck and Rae at their home in Cape Coral.  We visited them for about a week and had a great time.  We went to visit a rum distillery close to their home.  It was free and we even got to taste the rum they made, hic!

Wicked Dolphin Rum Distillery

Where they bottle the Rum

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Friday……taste!

They do their own testing for new flavors

Home Distillery

The next day the seas calmed down so Chuck and Rae took us for a boat ride where we anchored by a beach and watched the boats go by.  So relaxing and much warmer than Orange Beach

Here is the beach we anchored next to. Not quite warm enough to swim to

This person lives on his boat right here off the channel, you can get bait from him any time of the day or night

This boat is kept in a canel right in front of their home.  Guess what their home looks like 🙂

View from the back of their boat

Look at this boat, the garage in the back of the boat is bigger than some peoples garage on land!

See the large Toy Shed?

This island is owned by someone.  They use it to have weddings on.  Anyone interested?

Gilligan’s Island

We went out a few days later, down by Fort Myers Beach.  Beautiful area.  They have mooring balls you can tie to and while you are tied to them, someone will come out and give you water and a pump out, for a small fee.

Mooring balls at Fort Myers Beach

OMG, what is that I see?  It’s our old boat!

The Pearson

Pearson

Funny that two of the boats we owned have ended up down south.  We also learned this summer that our 1969 46′ Chris Craft Aqua Home was suppose to be heading down south too.  Maybe we’ll run into it someday.

We also ran into another Navigator down here.

Navigator

We really enjoyed our visit, we are home now.  Smokie didn’t seem to worse for the wear.  He got right back into the normal schedule of nap time

Smokie and Gary, Nap Time!

Now we have to get ready for visitors of our own.

There seems to be a break in the rain

See the rain come off the roof

Wow

So now looks like a good time to make a dash for the heads.  TMI?  Sorry 🙂

We went to a parade on Fat Tuesday.  Apparently they close the schools and some businesses for Monday and Tuesday to celebrate Mardi Gras.  We had such fun at the parade.  We were located at the start of this particular parade.  We got to the parade an hour early and were able to set our chairs right up to the curb.  We saw this little person under a blanket

Munchkin under a blanket

We saw an orangutan at a zoo that did the same thing but he covered himself up with a burlap bag.  See, not much difference between youngins and chimps 🙂

Colleen bundled up

It was a little windy and chilly that day but see….no snow 🙂

We thought we had a prime spot on the parade route as we watched the people line up on the street

People lining the route

Little did we know that once the parade started, everyone went out in the street to get closer to the floats and the people tossing stuff from them.

People budging in front of us

We maintained our position on the curb.  Those people were closer, but we were higher so we caught the stuff that flew over their heads.  And I am talking flew, you really had to pay attention or you might get a Moon Pie in the head.  I was hit in the chest with a bag of beads!  Not only did they toss the beads

See the beads hanging?

but they tossed out candy, Moon Pies, stuffed animals, plastic cups and rolls (there is a restaurant down here, called Lambert’s Cafe, where they throw rolls to people eating there as they pass out food.  It is suppose to be quite fun).  Most of the floats in this parade were owned by restaurants but there were a few high school bands and fire engines.  It was loads of fun.  I’ll post more pictures under the more pictures tab.  I think we’ll go again next year.

On March 5th we went to Big Lagoon Park.  We had to pay to get in here but it was only $6 for our car.  Once in there we walked around on the dock like paths they had in the park.  Some sections looked like they had a fire

Burned wood

Burned tree stump

We don’t know if it was a controlled burn or not.  There were quite a few areas that were burned.  As we walked around we met a couple from Michigan.  They had a motor home in the parks RV area.  They had been here for 7 weeks and were returning soon.  Like almost everyone we meet, they told us all about them selves and their families.  See, we are just making new friends where ever we go :).

We walked up this 3 story observation deck and I was taking some pictures of the bay

Picture of bay

Another picture of bay

I saw this thing in the bay but I couldn’t tell what it was.  Sometimes I take a picture just so I can see what something is

Sunk boat

It turned out to be a half sunk boat.  Ya never know what you are going to find at the end of your lens.

On the 6th, it was kind of rainy and gloomy so we decided to do a little exploring by car.  We found a road that followed the east side of Mobile Bay.  We drove along the road at 20 MPH (luckily there was little to no traffic), the houses ranged from a beat up shack to multi-million dollar homes.  We saw this carving at a Yacht Club

carved tree top

More dolphin

Dolphin on tree

Carved Tree

Pretty cool.  We had fun exploring the roads and small parks and boat ramps.  Still plenty for us to see and do here but I think it is time for nap 🙂