Week 16
Week 16
Oct 27- Nov 2
Monday
We left Pickwick Tenn. and cruised 9 miles to Safe harbor aqua yacht marina in Mississippi. There's a spot on the river where we were in 3 States at the same time: Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama. It was a beautiful ride. Every day we see more vibrant colors as the leaves change.
We were invited to lunch on Good Karma. Then we got a courtesy van to go to Corinth for supplies. Good Karma, and Oma both came too.
Corinth has a lot of history. The railroad goes through there both north to south and east to west. So in the civil war it was important to have control over this area, which the union was able to do by winning the battle of Shiloh.
We went to a little cafe and ice cream store called Borrams. It was built in the 1870s as a drugstore. They have kept much of the building original. Then we walked down the street to the coca cola museum. It's very small but darling and tells the history. The next building over is the still working coca cola bottling plant. It was the first plant in the U.S. for bottling coke in the 1800s. We made an Ace hardware stop and walmart. I get so excited to get to a Walmart!!! We never know when we'll get to another one. Needless to say, we are stuffed to the gills now with our provisions. We went to a restaurant called The pizza grocery. It's in an old warehouse and very cute. Our last stop was the shoe depot. I've been struggling for 7 weeks now with my ingrown toenail . Hopefully the new shoes will fix the problem! We got back to the marina at 8:30pm and loopers midnight is 9 pm. We were pooped.
Tuesday
Happy birthday to our grandson Kaelen. He's 4 today. Lately we've been very kidsick. It's like being homesick except we're not missing our home. We miss our kids and grandkids!!!
I fixed our lunch to cook while we had electricity. I made a chicken and rice dish and made an extra one for Good Karma. They're always feeding us. I wanted to return the favor once. We took the food to them and bid them farewell. They're headed home to Louisiana and we're headed on a side trip to Chattanooga. We are so sad to see them go. They're good people, so generous, kind and helpful.
We were getting ready to cast off when a couple came running over to meet us. They are fellow loopers and have been following our YouTube channel apparently. They saw the latest episode of our Shiloh tour and realized we were at the same marina. Super nice folks that just started in lake Michigan. It's always fun and surprising when we run into folks who follow us.. Allison reached out her hand to say my name is Allison, and the lady says, “oh, I know who you are. I know all about you. I’ve watched all your episodes.”. Kinda weird.
We cast off and went to see yellow creek falls not far from the marina. It's a beautiful little spot in a small cove. We continued down the Tennessee river to get to Florence Alabama our 14th state I believe. I only count the state if we stayed at a marina. We've seen Ohio and Missouri but we didn't stay there.
Wednesday
We got a courtesy van from the marina at 9 am. We had the van for 2 hours. Our first stop the FAME recording studio in Muscle Shoals.
It's the longest family owned studio still running by the family in the country.
One fun story is Demi Lavato came to record. The band was out in the main room playing their instruments. She was in a sound booth singing and her voice was so strong it was overpowering the instruments. They brought her into the main room to stand on the parquet wood floor where the floor and walls could help absorb her voice. Many famous singers have recorded in that studio Aretha Franklin, Allman brothers, Mac Davis, Stephen Tyler, Little Richard, Oakridge Boys, and Alabama just to name a few. The studio is still booked 3 days a week for recording. It was super interesting to see the whole process of getting a song onto a record and how this place got it's start. This small non descript studio is world famous. Watch the free documentary on YouTube called Muscle shoals, made in 2013. It’s fascinating.
Our next stop was the birth home of Helen Keller. The home was built in 1820 by her grandparents. It was on a parcel over 600 acres. Now it is down to 10 acres. The key Helen used to lock Ann Sullivan in the bedroom on her first day there is still on display. The famous well pump is there where she learned the word water.
Helen graduated from college with Ann spelling all the words on Helen's hand from the lectures. Helen became a writer and speaker traveling all over the world. She wrote 8 books and wrote a regular column. Ann stayed with her until her death.
We had to turn the van in and went back to the boat. We had our first institute class for this block. We have the middle east again. We have 13 students registered and 11 came. This was the best first class we've ever had. They were open friendly and very responsive.
We went for a walk through a nearby park and ended up at a visitor's center. We got some good info. We were told to go to Swampers to listen to some live music and have dinner. The name swampers comes from the band that would play for artists like Aretha at FAME studio. We love live music, so this was a fun find. We had to walk to town first and then get an Uber ride to the hotel where Sawmpers is located. The food was great. The musician not so great.
It's been mostly raining all day again today. It has kept us from walking around as much as we normally would. We stopped at a walgreens and picked up an umbrella!
Thursday
We left this morning and our first lock was Wilson lock, the highest lock lift on the loop and biggest overall lock east of the rockies. 100 feet of lift. There is a lot of turbulance in the water as the water rises in the massive chamber. It’s really visible on our YouTube video for week 16 ep2.
We traveled 20 nautical miles to another lock for another 50 feet lift for a total of 150 rise today.
We pulled in to Joe Wheeler state park marina in Alabama. It was very windy. Thank goodness 2 looper boat men came to help catch the lines. I couldn't hold the boat by myself the wind was so strong. It wasn't raining today, but it was still cold and overcast. It's been raining since Sat. We're ready for some sunshine.
We did a little walking but it was just too cold and windy. We went to the state Park lodge for dinner. They had a special of all you can eat frog legs! We weren't interested. Ed ordered clam strips and got a huge plate of them. Enough for 3 meals ….really.
Friday
Happy Halloween! We woke up to sunshine!!! We spent the morning doing the laundry and watching through video chat, the grandkids parade in their Halloween costumes at school.
We helped several looper boats tie up. Four came in today including Advontour!! We were happy to see them. They had our space heater they picked up for us clear back in Green Turtle Bay when our Amazon package got delayed.
Ed and I went for a hike in the woods in this beautiful state park.
Our neighbor boat Adventour invited us over for dinner. They had kids and a granddaughter staying with them. So this 3 year old went trick or treating down the dock to about 5 boats. It was super cute.
They found a fall festival at a local baptist church in Rogersville, Alabama .Their kids had a car so they were able to shuttle us over to this church. There were games, bounce houses, trunk or treating, Chili and hot dogs, and my favorite the holy ghost walk. The whole thing was super cute and fun.
Saturday
We said good bye to Advontour this morning. We left to cruise 23 nautical miles up the river to Decatur AL. We tied up to their free city wall which means we don't have water or electricity. We will have to use our generator when we need electricity.
We walked for almost 2 miles to get to the very cute main street. One neighborhood we walked through was pretty sketchy. We found a nice cute old restaurant to have dinner. We walked a different route home and found some very historic buildings. There's so much civil war history in these parts.
We paid $6 for 24 hours of espn so we could watch the Utah/Cincinnati football game. It was worth it! We won.
Sunday
We were so blessed to get a ride to church. Ed usually contacts the local Bishop and asks if any members live near the marina. A very nice couple was willing to go out of their way to go to the boat launch ramp on the outskirts of town. It was fast and testimony meeting. I was so impressed that the time was completely filled. So many sweet testimonios. The ward is huge filling into the overflow. Sunday school was very interesting. In light of the Michigan LDS church shooting they had their 5th Sunday combined meeting on protection and security. A retired FBI agent gave a brief emergency safety message. Basically it's run, hide, and last resort fight. Hide and keep the lights off stay very low and call 911 and keep your phone on. The bishop went through the handbook for other basic safety and protection especially for the children and youth. It was very interesting. Then Shawney and Patricia, our new friends gave us a ride back to the boat. We left them with a spiritual message and the Alva Beaman story of holding the Gold plates.
While I was cooking dinner we popped a circuit breaker. It took Ed awhile to figure out how to get it going again because there are so many hidden breakers in compartments. Ed found the correct one down under in the Lazarette.
It was rainy and cloudy all day so we mostly just hung out on the boat at the free dock as it was too late to move on and went for a short walk. See you next time…
The Love Me Fender crew
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