Touch of Class

We left the marina at 8:45, luckily there was no ice this time.   People we had talked to described the TennTom as a ditch and they were right.  It is a narrow, straight channel.  I hope we don’t run into many tows while we are in the narrow sections, I’m not sure how we’ll pass them.

There were weird waffle things on the side of the river.  Gary figured they were to catch the debris that came out of them.

Waffles

We had a very short day today and arrived at Bay Springs Marina at 2:00.  They charged us $66.88 for the night.  This is the place that had really poor cell phone coverage and the closest town was 40 miles away.  A little more secluded than we wanted to be plus there were alligators there!

Alligators

Luckily he didn’t eat us.  So it is early to bed early to rise even if we have a short day tomorrow, there are 3 locks we have to go thru.  Sweet Dreams ya’ll!

A few days ago it was so cold over night that when we woke up, all our doors were frozen shut.  Luckily we got them open otherwise we’d still be there :).  There was even ice on our railings.

Ice on the Railing

We went to the office to let them know that we’d be leaving the next day.  We made small talk about the cold weather.  One of the guys told us the weather was fine until you “Yankees” showed up!  What could we do?  We greed with them.  What can I say, the weather has been crappy and unusually cold the entire time we have have left the marina.  Oh well, it is still warmer where ever we are compared to Minnesota so I won’t complain too much 🙂

We left the marina early on the 8th.  There was ice in the marina close to shore and the first two slips on our dock had ice in them.  We were hoping it wasn’t an indication of what to expect on the trip out.  Gary even had to pour warm water on the lines to get them to uncoil as they were frozen to the dock.  We had ice on our thru-hull.

Icicles on our thruhulls

You can also see where the water from our heating splashed on the dock and froze there.

Ice on Dock

We ended up driving thru 200 feet of ice, 3/4’s inch thick.  When we turned the corner to enter the TennTom waterway the front was full of ice, white ice.  We knew that would be too thick for us to drive thru and we couldn’t see how far it went……we turned around and headed back to the dock.  We’ll have to wait until it melts in a few days.

We’ll try again on Friday.

We drove home for Christmas and just got back.  We had quite the adventure trying to get home.  Half an hour into our trip, at 4:15 A.M. we hit a deer.  Or should I say, the deer hit us.  Needless to say, a few swear words came out of my mouth as I was driving.  We pulled over to the side of the road, Gary got out and assessed the damage.

Car wreck

We were missing a few parts and things were hanging down but with a rope and a come along strap, we were able to tighten things up and take off.  Crap!  What is that noise?  We are dragging something from down below.  Over to the side of the road again.  The plastic bumper guard is dragging.  Gary has me back up and he pulls that out and tosses it to the side of the road.  Litter bug! We’re off again.  Now the low tire lite is on.  Now what?!  We pull over again.  The rear passenger tire if flat.  Double crap.  We call Geigo our new insurance company.  We have towing assist coverage.  They were very helpful unfortunately they couldn’t find a tow company where we were to help us change our tire.  Geico was able to get a hold of the Sheriff who came out and parked his car behind us so we, or should I say Gary, could have some light to change the tire with.  Needless to say it was kind of chilly and the Sheriff wasn’t too excited about crawling around under the car to get the spare down.  I should of hid Gary in the car and played “damsel in distress”.  We have the stow and go seating so the spare is located under the car between the driver and passenger seats.  So between Gary, the cop, and I reading the owners manual, we managed to get the tire changed.  The Sheriff followed us the 10 miles to the next town to Wal-Mart so we could get the tire repaired or replaced.  It was 6:30 in the morning and they didn’t open till 8:30.  We took a little nap in the parking lot until they opened.  They were able to fix the tire with just a plug.  We told them our story and they didn’t charge us a dime.  What a great place and Thank you Wal-Mart!

We arrived back in Minnesota with no further deer hits.   Gary had put what appeared to be the brains of the car in a couple of plastic bags to keep it dry on the way home.  The guy at the repair shop said it was a good thing he did that as if it fell off, we would have stopped dead!  Luckily we were able to get Osseola Auto Body to repair our car.  They did a bang up job and had us back on the road by December 31st.  (If you are looking for a repair shop, I highly recommend them)

In the mean time, we had a wonderful 2 weeks or so visiting the family and of course enjoying the cute Grandbaby

We made it back to Aqua with no deer hits but I think we are going to buy those little whistles to put on our bumper for the next trip home. 🙂

Good Morning.  Here is another update on the Hermes.

We have heard that our hoist has finally been shipped and should arrive in 4 days.  We are hopeful that it can be installed before we continue our journey down south in January.

One of the thing people wanted to know is how much it cost us to get from Stillwater MN to Aqua Yacht Harbor in Iuka, MS.  We traveled slowly, by some people’s standards, at about 8 miles an hour.  That is the average.  We were very lucky to only have to wait at a few of our many locks and Damns.  We never ran the generator when we traveled.  Our fridge runs on 12 volt or 12o so we didn’t have to have the generator on while we traveled.  We only ran the generator when we anchored and then for maybe an hour or so at night so I could make dinner and the same in the morning so we could make coffee.  Gary installed several 12 volt plug ins so we could charge all of our electronics while we were at anchor without having the generator on.   We also switched out all of our lights to LED to cut down on the ampage.

We traveled 1114.4 miles with an average MPG of 2.648.  We left on September 30th and arrived at Aqua on October 25th.  We stayed at 15 different marinas, some better than others.  We anchored out 4 or 5 times.  We spent a week at Green Turtle before we continued on to our final destination for November and December of Aqua Harbor.  Here is what we spent:

Dockage (I only included one day for Green Turtle) – $793.01

Dining Out – $181.86

Fuel (this is based on an average of $4 per gallon) – $1,600

Provisions (of which we still have ample) – $679.47

For a total of $3,254.34

Not to bad to move your house down the river and enjoy many new and exciting sights and smells.  We’ll give you a total of our trip from Aqua down to Orange Beach Alabama when we get down there.

Have a good Christmas and Happy New Year and I hope you all get what you want from Santa!

Boat at Aqua

Hello!  How have you all been?  Sounds like winter is in full swing back in Minnesota and freezing cold.  I feel for ya 🙂  It has been raining for the past few day so I thought I would update the blog.  The weather people have been talking freezing rain, snow and sleet here for the past few days.  They treat this weather just like Minnesotans treat their blizzards.  The cities have gone so far  as to close schools and businesses the day before the storm hits.  That is just in anticipation of the ice storm!  That would never happen in Minnesota. Of course, they only have, like, 12 plows in Memphis.  They must just be sanding and salting the highways there.  We have decided to hunker down and take naps and watch the boob tube till this blows over.  I left Minnesota to get away from the freezing rain so I wouldn’t kill myself walking around on slick sidewalks and roads.  I certainly don’t want to do it here.

Most of you from Sunnyside have probably heard already but Mike and Beccie McCarville from Lil Red Tug showed up here around the 8th and stayed for the weekend.  We were able to go out to eat with them a few times and share some cocktails while they were here. We shared our adventures but some of theirs were way more exciting than anything we had.  I’m glad we didn’t have any adventures like they had.  They have a blog too, it is http://www.lilredtug.com, Mike said he was going to get it updated.  Check it out to see how their trip is going.

On November 14th, my brother Tim drove our van down from Minnesota so we could make the trip back for the big birth of our first Grandchild.  We were hoping we could hang around here with Tim for a few days before we headed back but Jenny called us while we were giving Tim a ride on the boat.  The midwife felt the baby may be 10 pounds.  Wow, that would be a keeper :).  But because of the size of the baby, they wanted to do some things to move along her labor.  She told us she was going in for acupuncture and the person had a 70% success rate.  Acupuncture?  What happened to going bowling, eating spicy food and having sex to start labor?  Will modern medicine never cease to amaze?  Well, we figured we better hustle back to Minnesota.

On November 15th we headed out at 6 AM.  We almost got to the end of the long marina drive when I realized I forgot the bread.  That would have been a furry mess by the time we got back, so back to the boat for the bread.  Then on the road again.  Not too long into the ride Smokie uses the litter box.  Good kitty!  We are off to a good start.  I decide to give him some water.  What does he do?  He walks from his litter box into his water dish.  Crap, now his dish has litter in it.  Smokie!  Bad kitty!  He finally lays down and the miles roll on. This Dodge Caravan we have purchased as our “support vehicle” is very comfortable and roomy.  We call it a “support Vehicle” cause heaven forbid we are driving around in a minivan, those are for Soccer Moms, not for world travels such as ourselves ;). We are glad we bought it.  A few hours down the road Smokie pukes.  He pukes in the litter box though.  Good kitty!  Oh Oh.  He pukes again, this time his face falls in the litter and he gets litter all over his tongue.  ICKY!  He starts spitting and sputtering to get it off his tongue.  Poor kitty!  He is a trooper though to handle a 15 hour drive back to Minnesota.

I take over driving around 12:30.  Buckle up!  Colleen is driving now.  As we are driving along we are comparing the routes on the two Garmins we have.  Ours was just updated this spring, Tim’s is over 5 years old and had never been updated.  The Garmins have us taking different routes.  It is interesting so see how the roads must have changed over the years.

As we are driving along it suddenly smells like s—.  Did Smokie take a dump?  No….it is just cow manure.  The roads are good, but as you know, it gets dark so early now.  I am still driving and we just pull from a from 2 lane down to 1 lane and dang it, we have a semi in front of us that is poking along.  I decide to go for it and pass the semi.  Whew!  That was a close one :).  Sniff, sniff.  What is that smell?  It smells like s—.  Whoops, did I make Gary and Tim poop in their pants from that close passing of the semi?  No…it is only cows again.  After Gary’s heart rate returns to normal, he tells me he is impressed with the power of the van :).  He probably won’t let me drive on any more 1 lane roads on the way home.

We finally get to my sister Debbie’s house at 8 to drop Tim off so he can get his car and drive the 2 hour drive home.  Thanks Tim for coming to get us.  Sorry Debbie, can’t stay, Jenny is holding dinner for us.  We rush to Jenny’s house.  No baby, barely a cramp.  It is going to be a long wait.  We spend the next week hanging around Jenny and Mark’s house while they go to doctor appointments.  The Midwife will try several things to get the ball rolling.  Jenny is having labor pains but they don’t seem to last long nor are they consistent.  While we wait for baby’s Victor’s arrival, I text Pat to find out how Smokie is doing.  Apparently Smokie was a little cranky after his 15 hour drive.  He hissed at Pat a few times the first night.  Poor kitty.  Hopefully Smokie will get used to it, this won’t be the last time he’ll have a long car ride.

About 9:00 P.M., on November 21st, Jenny thinks her water broke so it is off to the hospital they go.  We follow after gathering a few items.  We find her all set up in a Labor room already.  Jenny wants me to stay in the room with her and Mark, Gary decides to get out of the way and waits out in the waiting room.  By 3 AM, Jenny is just not progressing like they want her to.  They decide to induce her.  By 7 AM I come back into the room and Jenny is on oxygen and the baby’s heart rate is dipping every time there is a contraction.  By 7:45 the baby is in distress.  Time to get that baby out NOW!  They take Jenny in for a C-section.  Both Mark and I are a little freaked.  Good thing Martha is there to calm us down.  By 830 Victor is born

Victor

7 lbs 13 1/2 ozs, 21 1/2 inches long.  I must say, he is pretty cute!

Baby Love

Mom and Baby are fine.

Gary and I just stay to celebrate Thanksgiving with family.  That was a good time and too much food as usual.  We decide to head out early on Black Friday but we are going to stop in Hannibal, MO to check out some of the historical sites around there.

We get to Hannibal by around 3 or so.  We have already made reservations at a Best Western hotel.  We are hoping we can sneak Smokie in because it is going to be cold at night.  Luckily we can get him in.  He makes himself right at home

Do you mind? I’m trying to take a bath here.

So, as long as Smokie was making himself at home we decided to check out the historical town.   Of course we couldn’t stay away from any marina in sight.  We came along the Hannibal Marina.  We had passed it while we were traveling down by boat and Gary commented that it looked like the slips were listing.  They were

Docks on shore

The water is down so far that the docks are in the mud.  There is a 1969 Chris Craft Aqua home there like the one we used to have.  Apparently the owner of that boat keeps it in the water all year round.  But….it looks funny

Listing Chris Craft

Look!  Those are his bumbers (or fenders depending upon who you talk to :)) that are way above the dock.  What the????? OMG!

Chris Craft on land

Look at that!  The boat is actually sitting in the mud.  The water has dropped so far there is just water lapping at the mud under the boat.  Man!  That can’t be good for the struts, rudders and props.  Hopefully the owner dug out room for those or he’ll be in for a surprise when the water comes up.

We made it back to the boat without a hitch.  Now we are just hanging around doing normal stuff while we wait to return to the tundra called Minnesota for Christmas.  I will say it is really weird sitting in the pilot house addressing Christmas cards in my shorts.  We won’t be heading farther south until after the 1st of the year.  So this will probably be my last entry till then.  I hope you all have a Merry Christmas.

I leave you with these last pictures.  They have a lighted boat parade and one of our neighbors has entered his boat.  He has spent several days getting it all ready.  It is really beautiful at night.  Have a wonderful day and until next time……….

Boat Decorated

Decorated Boat

More boat

Pretty

I thought I would update this blog every now and again if I had some interesting things to share.

There are a few nice areas to walk around in.  Plenty of hills that really give you a good work out.  We try to walk these every day to get some exercise and hopefully before not too long we won’t be huffin and puffin when we get to the top to the hills :).  Here are a few pictures of one of the streets we walk on

Walking path

I also saw some big, and weird to me, mushrooms

Big mushroom by my blue shoe

Like my blue Crocs?  They match my MV Touch of Class T-shirt.  Must coordinate ya know 🙂

Big Mushroom

BTW, I know these are cool mushrooms cause I saw another woman taking pictures of them too, so there!

The exercise equipment here is a little disappointing.  Of course I have belonged to a gym for the past 5 years so I have been spoiled.  The weight equipment looks pretty good but the tread mill and other equipment are pretty banged up and loose. Apparently the marina has had trouble with the neighboring people/kids who don’t belong in the marina, getting in and they mess up the equipment and even stealing it.  That is really too bad.

Here are some pictures of the piers for this marina.  They are quite long.  As we need a bigger slip, we are far out on the end.  We have decided to stay here for at least a year so we rented slip G52 until 12/31/2014.  We figured we should live here for a full year to see what the weather is like year round before we can decide if we want to stay here longer.  We are still taking the boat down further south in January thru April, but by having an annual lease we will be assured a slip to bring the boat back to and also have a place to leave our van if we need to.  Here are a couple of pictures of pier G where we have the boat

Pier F and G

Pier G and the Gas Dock

Our slip faces the East and the gas dock.  We have decided to back in as the fingers are pretty narrow and our neighbor to our north has their steps on the dock and they practically take up the whole finger.  Gary does a good job getting the boat backed in.  It is more difficult especially if you are not used to it.  I stand on the back of the boat and we put on our head set so we can talk to each other.  I tell him which way to go so he doesn’t hit the dock and then when to stop to he doesn’t back in too far.  We’ve had to back in twice now and it seems to work pretty well.  I’m sure we’ll get more practice the longer we stay here.

With the slip we are in, when we sit in the pilot house, we have an excellent view of the gas dock.  We had an even better view of the gas dock at our slip at Sunnyside.  I’m sure this one here will provided hours of entertainment as we watch inexperience boaters attempt to dock at the gas dock.  Very similar to the fireworks on the 4th of July, lots of oooohs and aaaaaahs and WOWs :), but a few more OUCHs and Holy Crap, Did You See That????  I can hardly wait for summer to come ;).

Insect Poop

Here is a picture of some interesting insect poop.  It looks like a chocolate Dairy Queen.  They stick out as shown and are/were all over the boat.  We are hoping they were from the bugs at Green Turtle and not from the bugs here, only time will tell.  Insect poop is a major problem of all boaters.  Whether it be spider poop, which is little black circles that are very hard to get off and can stain your canvas, or the blue poop from some new and unusual insect that showed up at Sunnyside this year.  Again, hard to clean.  See the problem us boaters have 🙂

Kumbaya Floating Again

Here is the boat we mentioned earlier, Kumbaya.  They are apparently fixed and ready to continue their adventure.  We hope they make it and have better luck and no mishaps.

Hanging Dingy

Here is an unusual way to keep your dingy (a dingy is a small boat that the bigger boats have so when they are at anchor, they can take the dingy ashore for provisions or cocktails. Whoops, did I say cocktails?  I just meant pop  :). Several marina’s even have dingy docks where people can park their boat while they are ashore).  After careful examination, we figured this contraption must have been added at the time the dock was built.  What a great idea.  Keeps the dingy hull clean and he even has enough room to drop the dingy next to big boat and get it out of the slip.  Good idea as long as it doesn’t fall 😦

Burned Boat

This boat was severely burned on the starboard (right) side.  We first saw this boat about 5 years ago when we were in the area looking at a boat and stopped into Aqua to check it out.  I didn’t want to be too obvious when taking the picture so you can’t see where the gel-coat is still all bubbly and flaky on the fly bridge.  That long tear drop thing should have a fiberglass insert over it, that is what the black line is, probably a glue line to hold on the missing part.  They have brown Styrofoam stuffed in the holes.  Pretty bad-looking.  You’d think by now they would have had it fixed.

Listing boat

Here is a boat that needs to shift its contents around a little so it is not leaning so much 🙂

Yesterday we took the boat out for a little ride to warm up the engines so Gary could change the oil.  We went out to Pickwick lake.

Pickwick Lake

Not a very good picture but you can see that the leaves are changing nicely down here.  There are a bunch of little coves all over the place that look really cool for anchoring in.  We will probably check them out with the little boat once we get the hoist on the back. There is one cove with a water fall in it.  We checked that one out, I wouldn’t really call it a waterfall.  There is water coming out of the rocks.  We had the same thing at Sunnyside but these are just higher up.  Maybe there is more of a flow in the summer, we’ll have to wait and see.

We were finally able to get the Marina people and the people who have the davit we want together so they could figure things out and order the davit.  We have our little boat on the back of our boat but no way to get it down unless of course if the boat sinks, which we hope will not happen!  The ball has been rolling so hopefully it will be installed before we leave for the south.

We have talked to Tim and Martha and Tim will be traveling down to get us on the 14th or so to bring us back up to Minnesota.  We are looking forward to seeing our family and friends in Minnesota.

If you are ever in the area, stop by and see us, ya hear 🙂

10/25/2013 – Stayed at Pebble Isle Marina last night. Another real nice marina.  $52.13 (.95 per foot plus tax).  We filled up there also, $3.87 per gallon.  Petty good price.  We got in pretty late but we did have a chance to walk around.  We ran into a woman as we walked the docks.  She told us she loved it there, has lived there for the past 14 years and she was originally from Detroit.  She told us the weather we were having was unseasonably cool.  Then she started talking to us about the summer.  “It’s hot here”, she said.  “We just don’t sit on the porches drinkin lemonade and ice tea here, ya know.  You get your business done early in the morning, cause you’ll melt if you don’t.  And there’s snakes here, so many snakes they is comin out of your a_ _.  I’m taking rattlers and water moccasins.”  Holy Smokes!  What a way to make people want to stay in Tennessee.  Hotter in hell and crawlin with snakes.  Sounds like some place I want to live.  Cross another state off my list 🙂

The guy who was running the gas dock came over (he was real nice and didn’t scare us with talk of unbearable heat and snakes), he asked us when we were leaving cause they were going to have hot cinnamon buns in the morning, he said they’d have them ready by 7:45 if we could wait that long before we left.  Hot cinnamon buns….who can turn that down?  Of course we were going to stay for that!

When we woke in the morning it was 30° and there was frost on our boat and on the docks plus the fog was pretty thick.

Frost on the boat

We figured we better hunker down until the fog lifted besides, there were those hot cinnamon buns to eat!  Yum!   They were delish and FREE!  What a deal, plus free coffee too.  By the time we finished savoring those cinnamon buns and drinking the coffee the fog had lifted enough that we could shove off.

Smokie is getting quite brave,

Smokie Chillin

he waited a little while after the girls were started before he ran down stairs.  5 minutes after we left, he is up looking out the window of the pilot house door.  Brave Kitty!  It has only taken him 26 days.  Hopefully he adjusts to the car rides quicker.  Meowing for 14 hours could drive a person nuts 🙂

In my last post I talked about 1^st and 2^nd class anchoring, actually the term is 1^st class landing.  I was wondering what they were.  Well it helps if you read the charts :).  What a 1st class landing means is there is a  guaranteed depth of 9 feet at the shore.  I guess that is so the tows can shove their barges into the bank if they need some place hang out while they wait for something.

We haven’t seen hardly any tows since we got on the Tennessee but we did see this one today

Smoking tow

We couldn’t figure out what it was but it looks like it is smoking!

We passed by some interesting things today.  Mermaid Marina.  We didn’t stop as their water depth wasn’t deep enough for us, but cool sign 🙂

Mermaid Marina

A tug on shore, I think someone may have lost their job for not moving it before the water dropped.

Tug on Shore

Another form for hunting house on the river, I think they forgot the camo.

Hunting Shack

The shores have changed again.  The rocks on the shore are in a more layered look.  There are quite a few spots where it looks like the slabs have broken and slid like below.

Rocks

This was a long haul today, we have another one tomorrow, to our final desitnation of Aqua Yacht Harbor.  Tonight we stayed at Clifton Marina.

Clifton Marina

The marina had a narrow entrance but we got in ok.  It was a pretty small marina though but nice people.  After we had dinner, there were a few people in the ships store (this is where they had their restaurant), so we went in there to chat with people.  Remember the story I told you about this boat, Kumbaya

Kumbaya

A guy that had just come down from Aqua was telling us about this boat called Kumbaya.  The guy missed the entrance to Aqua and ended up on the rocks.  He punched a hole in his boat.  The police came and made them (remember, this was an older gentleman and his sister in law of the same age) get off the boat as it was taking on water and it wasn’t safe for them.  They had the dam release some water to raise the river a few inches so the BoatUS Tow boat could pull them off the rocks and take the boat to Aqua.  We were like, “you have got to be kidding me!”  A really big black cloud is following that boat and those people.  We will have to see the boat when we get to Aqua.  We feel so bad for those people, nothing but bad luck.  It will be interesting to see if they pack it in or keep going.

10/26/2013 – there was frost, fog and 31° again last night.  We left Clifton Marina about 9 after fog lifted.  Many interesting things today to see.  We saw some cows today.  They looked like they were outlined in black and they were white in the middle.  Very unusual coloring.  We have also noticed the rocks don’t seem to run parallel to the river and yes my camera is straight!  Weird huh?  I wonder how that happened.

crooked rocks

We saw this on a bank.  Nothing above it like if fell from it.  The sides appear to be metal but it is about 150 feet below the top of the embankment.

What happened?

We have also been seeing Hank (a heron) following us down south from Sunnyside.  He always sat on the end of Pier 1 at night.  Ya know, I have never heard him make any noise.  Now I have.  Man!  He is loud and doesn’t have a very nice voice.  Really loud and screechy.  Not very becoming Hank!

The tow sightings have dropped considerably now that we are on the Tennessee.  We did see another tow today and it was carrying a very small tug.  I guess it was cheaper to have it taken down as cargo rather than driving it down on its own bottom.

We saw a small house that had the shore wash out from under it or else it’s stilts broke off, either way, not very safe.

Hanging House

House with erosion close up

Plus this other house that had shore fall out from under it.  Pretty scary.  The way the tress and stuff are falling down the banks I don’t think I buy a house that was so close to the embankment good view or not.

House with erosion

We also say this ½ car in someone’s back yard.  The inside was all nicely done.  Maybe he was using it for a trailer

Half a car

I started seeing these type of bird houses too, anyone know what kind of bird use them?

Bird Houses

We finally arrived at the Pickwick Dam at 3:00.  It was a 55 foot lift.  Incredible!   Once we pulled out into the lake I was amazed at how beautiful it was.  And the houses!  Man, I have a bunch of pictures of the incredible houses on this lake.  Not too shabby but nothing I can afford :).  Here are some of them

House

house

Then we got to Aqua Yacht Harbor

Aqua Yacht Harbor

($9/foot/month winter dockage).  We tied to the transient dock for the night.  Nice place.  We’ll have to wait till tomorrow to check it out.

10/27/13 – They put us in slip 61 on G dock.  Fully covered.  60 foot slip.  Cable is $45 per month.  Internet is $20 per month.  We got cable, and after going without internet for a day, we got the internet too :).  They are letting us use the courtesy van tomorrow so we can get some groceries.  We walked the docks today and found the Kumbaya in the service area.  We found out that it’s hull is like a catamaran hull under the water.  So the bow only has 4 inches of the hull pushing the water.

Kumbaya hull

Both of his props were gone.  We couldn’t see a hole so maybe he just buggered up his props.

10/28/2013 – We were walking down the transient dock to pick up our courtesy car this morning when we met a couple that were just taking off to finish their 2nd Loop adventure.  They told us the thought the worst part of the loop was the Tenn-Tom.  They call it the “trench”.  They said it was so bad because of the locks and it was boring.  Nothing to see.  I guess we won’t mind after traveling down the Mississippi 🙂

We found a great Grocery store, Kroger.  They have some pretty good deals but be sure to get their card at the service desk first.  We met with the service people and they are going to be checking into getting the hoist installed before we leave.

Well, we are here at Aqua for the next few months.  My brother, Tim, is bringing our van down from Minnesota in about 3 1/2 weeks so we can drive back with him for the birth of the 1st Grandson, Victor, and then we’ll staying for Thanksgiving.  Then we’ll head back here and hang around for a few weeks then head back to Minnesota for Christmas.  There probably won’t be too many updates in the mean time so don’t worry about us.  We’ll pick up the adventure when we leave for, hopefully, Orange Beach, Alabama toward the end of December.  So stay tuned and you all have a great Thanksgiving and a safe and healthy Holiday Season. TTFN 🙂

We left Paris Marina at 9:30 this morning.  It wasn’t windy at all today so we were just slip sliding away.  I barely had to touch the wheel.  I felt like we were on a conveyor belt and the scenery was just passing by.  We traveled at about 6.5 knots all day.  We finally saw our first Tow at noon today.  Other than that, again, no other boats except for a few fishing boats.  I felt sorry for them cause they looked cold when they whizzed by us.

The Tennessee is very wide and deep in the channel, 40 to 50 feet.  There are a few lines we could follow on the Garmin but we are just sticking to the sailing line.  As we travel we can see some sticks, dead heads and birds standing on the land so we know it is shallow in parts.  Better safe than sorry!  There was a 43 foot SeaRay that was at Green Turtle.  He left on Tuesday and decided to take one of those other routes that show up on the Garmin cause he thought it looked more scenic.  Crash, Bang, Boom!  He had to call Tow BoatUS to pull him in.  Now he has to spend 2 weeks at Green Turtle waiting for shafts and props before he can continue on his merry way.  That was an expensive scenic route 🙂

It has been cloudy here and only about 54 out.  It is unseasonably cool here apparently.  As we were traveling we’d see areas marked with two white or red big fat arrows that pointed to each other.  The Garmin had them marked as First Class Anchorage or Second Class Anchorage.  We need to have someone tell us what that means.  Neither of them really looked like that good of a place to pull in.  There were quite a few little channels that were marked with little green and red buoys but sometimes they seemed to go do where.  Of course, we didn’t follow that trail.

There seems to be more sand and less cliffs on this section of the river.  The water is very clean, kind of a green color.  We heard that once we get down past Clinton, the river narrows down some.  We’ll have to wait and see, I think I might prefer that more.  Easier to travel down and follow the buoys.  Sometimes there was such a cluster it was hard to figure out which way to go.  Good things we have the charts to refer to also.  That helps.

We did see a few interesting things as we went.  These power poles went across the river, see how they have the structures around them to keep the barges from knocking them down.

Power Lines

There was this railroad bridge that was taken down and someone built their house on it.  Look underneath it.  Cool little sitting area!  They have a stairway going down on the left and couple of couple of chairs to sit down there on.

Cool House

Then this next picture is described as an abandoned dock.  I bet all the kids in town have been out there doing naughty things!

Abandoned Dock on Tennessee

We are now at Pebble Isle Marina.  They had a really good deal on diesel for $3.87 and dockage was $52.13 (.95 per foot plus tax).  They have a little restaurant, a courtesy van and town is only a couple of miles away.  Plus they are going to make cinnamon rolls early just so we can have some before we go.  Hey!  Good people in my book :).  I’ll post some more pictures on the picture page.  Ya all have a good night and come on back!

Here we are again at a marina with Wi-Fi.  Yeah!  So this is what we have been up to lately besides taking long naps and snuggling with Smokie.

On the 20th we checked out a few things at the marina and in town.  We went and used the indoor pool at the Marina.  Pretty nice.  They have exercise equipment; some bikes, tread mills and elliptical, plus they have a spa there where you can get peddi’s and manni’s, waxings….all sorts of stuff.  We just stuck with the pool.  They even had beach nooodles you could borrow!

Pool

Indoor pool

Then later that day we took a walk into the town of Grand Rivers.  Here is a scary serpent we saw at the kids park

playground

And only in a very small town would you find a store that had product sitting out on their deck.  The store was closed and they just left it sitting out all night.  Now that is trust! Granted they were ugly shoes and no one would probably want to steal them but, just saying…..

Shoes for Sale at the Pink Tractor

Later on that night we ate dinner at the big tourist spot there called Patty’s 1880 Settlement.  They have a bunch of small shops in the place, miniature golf, a chapel etc.  We ate at Patty’s because people were raving about the food.  It was very good and you certainly didn’t leave hungry.  Too full for the desert but they sounded wonderful.  They were all decorated up for Christmas

Patty’s

Animal in Decoration

How do you like that?  Not exactly sure what that little critter was but it was right above our table :).  At least we didn’t have to feed it.

On the 22nd we took our bikes out to give them a try.  They worked pretty good.  They have power assist so if you get tired or have to go up a big hill, you can hit a button and the power goes on and ziiiippppp, away you go.  While we were back in town again we saw this tree that had a bunch of electrical outlets on it and I thought of Beartrax.  See what you guys can do instead of running extension cords?

Electric in tree

They really decorate the town for Christmas.  Looks like a good idea.

More Electric for Christmas Decorations

Then for those of you at Sunnyside, look who showed up

Summer Song

They have it for sale, it is on http://www.yachtworld.com, $2.5 mil!  Check it out!

We left this morning, the 23rd, for Paris Landing State Park Marina.  About a 40 miles.  Not too bad a run and a pretty nice marina.  We had to drive down Barkley Canal which is a canal between the Tennessee and the Cumberland rivers.  When we were in the canal looking out at the Tennessee the river looked really rough, almost like rapids (crappy picture but the white things are the white caps on the river)

Tennessee

We didn’t see any boats except a few fishing boats.  The river is VERY wide and was quite rough.  Luckily the waves were at out stern so we did OK.  The terrain has changed here on this river.  It is more rocky and the bluffs are higher, not as much sand beaches.  There are some cool inlets that look neat if you knew where you were going.  We just followed the sail line on the Garmin.  We didn’t want to end up with any prop damage.

Land on the Tennessee

We arrived at Paris Landing around 2:30 or so.  Pretty nice spot.  We ran into our friends, Mark and Jane, who we met recently on our trip down.  They invited us to dinner at a buffet at the Park and then back to their boat for a drink.  They will be staying here for quite a while while we move on to Pebble Isle Marina in New Johnson, Tennessee.  We have 2 more marinas to hit before we hit our final destination for November and December of Aqua Yacht Harbor.  We are going to check out the ones we are stopping at for potential spots for next summer.  I’ll have some pictures of the marina next time I post.  So we’ll keep you posted!

Good Morning all.  We are enjoying Green Turtle.  We have a prime spot and are having fun checking out all the boats that pass thru here to their various destinations.  It would be fun to slip here to see all the action, although, we’d want a covered slip 🙂  Some of the boats that have stayed here so far are

65 foot Viking

They were here last night.  We figured it was a couple with a captain.  Apparently they traveled at 30 knots to get here.  WOW!  Get out of their way.  I don’t think they really care what kind of gas mileage they are getting.

Nordic Tug

This is a petty sweet boat but I am kind of partial to trawlers 🙂

Home Made Boat

Interesting boat huh?  The only entrance to the boat is in thru the transom door.  Apparently the guy, who looks to be in his 70’s and not particularly robust, was living some where in Ohio.  It took him 17 years to build it.  He modeled it after a canal boat.  He has two 75 HP diesels in it.  He and his wife had the same plan we did.  They sold their house and moved aboard.  Unfortunately the wife wrecked her Achilles heal or something and was suppose to have her foot in a boot for 2 months, the doc released her after 1 month.  So they were off.  Then they had a shaft seal go out in one of their engines and had to shut down one engine and were forced to traveling at night to get to a marina to get fixed.  Apparently they were about 200 feet from going over a dam before they realized where they were.  They ended up getting towed into Green Turtle.  Then the wife goes grocery shopping, falls, and breaks her ankle in 5 spots!  She is going down to Cape Coral, their final destination by ambulance, and the guy is going to continue to take the boat down.  He is taking is sister-in-law with him who doesn’t look much younger.  I don’t know, either the wife doesn’t want to take the trip on the boat and is resorting to breaking body parts so she doesn’t have to go or they have a little black cloud following them.  We wish them good luck on their travels.

We have taken quite a few walks around the marina.  They have quite a few piers that are covered which are nice.  They have a section of about 4 docks that we were wondering how the heck you get to them because they appear to be on the other shore of the marina.  I guess they back up to a gated community and in order to get there, you have to drive 2 miles around to get in.  The marina has road access to get to the docks over there.  Apparently, most of the people have dingys and they just use them for the short ride back and forth.

Here are some more pictures of boats that we have seen in the marina, this one looks familiar 🙂

Carver with a cock pit and a dosey doe swim platform

Unusual boat

Here is a couple of pictures of the docks.  Nice!

Bar on the Dock

Nice Chairs and a Totem Pole

It was good to see a couple of our traveling companions arrive safe and sound today.  Osprey, Geoff and Patty and Marmalade Skies, Mark and Jane.  I guess Mark did calculate the gas correctly, no problem!

On the 18th we took a walk into town to get a few groceries and check it out.  Not only does the maria decorate for Halloween, the town is all decked out too

Decorations Marina

Decorations Entry

The town had a nice IGA, I thought it did the job, we got what we needed.  The town had and antique store.  As neither Gary or I are big on antiques we almost skipped it but we noticed they had a couple of motorcycles in the window so we strolled over.  Wow!  They even sell guns.  What a combination, antiques and guns.  Guns, from AR-15 to shotguns to a gun in a cane.  And the knives!  Holy Crap they had a boat load of them.  Quite a selection.

The town even boasts a theater.  Apparently the hot spot is Patti’s 1880.  It is kind of a old settlement place.  They have shopping, mini-golf and a few differant places to eat.  We have been told by a few people that we should eat there.  I think we’ll hit there Monday or Tuesday.  We started meandering home and we saw these cute kitties

Kitties

See the two on the ground…is that a foot and tail coming out of the fender?  That must be the best place in the car to take a nap huh?

Well I’ll sign off for today.  And just remember

Remember