Week 18

 

Week 18

Nov. 10-16

Monday

We survived the night just fine, but it was a super cold morning, low 20s! We had one lock and we got right in around 7:30 am. We had a bit of snow last night and this morning here in Southern Tennessee!!! We crossed back into Alabama. We cruised until noon and pulled into Goose Pond marina about 43 nautical miles.

This marina had a courtesy van. It's so great when that happens. We went to several places looking for parts to fix the water heater and the circuit breaker.


The fun thing we did was go to the unclaimed baggage museum and store. It's a big store about the size of a super Walmart full of all kinds of things that the Airlines have from unclaimed luggage. I've been looking for a new watch and I needed earbuds, after losing one of mine in the river. So it was fun and successful.

I was able to do the big laundry, blankets and towels for only $1.50/load.

We had to go back to Home Depot again and picked up some dinner. Ed hopefully fixed the water heater hot hose and then noticed the cold-water hose was leaking. He got that fixed too.

Tuesday

We were up and ready early. We wanted to get the van again to go to the air and space museum in Huntsville. We were not able to get the van. We were a bit disappointed. Ed had household things to take care of. Then we took off for Guntersville Alabama. It was a short 23 nautical mile cruise. The sun was out and it's beautiful but still windy and cold!


Wednesday

We left first thing this morning. The temp had risen, and we had a beautiful sunny day in the upper 60s. We got through a lock and then found a place to anchor to hold our institute class behind an island.

We had to wait a bit for the train bridge to be raised and continued to Decatur, AL for a total of 48 nautical miles today.

We found a tennis court about 3 miles away and rode our scooters to a nice park with courts. It was so nice to be outside on a beautiful warm sunny day and play tennis. We stopped in downtown for dinner before heading back to the boat.


Thursday

It was a beautiful fall day today.

We were able to get an Uber to go to Huntsville Alabama to the NASA tranquility base rocket, air and space museum. It's huge! We spent about 4 hours looking at the exhibits and watching two films. It was fabulous. We got back to the boat around 2:30pm. We didn't want to waste daylight, so we took off for a couple of hours and cruised 23 nautical miles to anchor at Joe Wheeler state Park lake. We had a bit of trouble with the anchor alarm again. The GPS had to be set just right. See our YouTube video on the horrible alarm going off at 145am in pitch dark no moon conditions.











Friday

We got awakened in the middle of the night to the anchor alarm at 145am. It's so jarring. But we weren't dragging, so that was good news.

We got through our first lock really fast. The weather today is so nice, sunny warm in the 70s. We were able to sit on the flybridge for the first time in a while for several hours in the sunshine. We got to our second lock and had to wait almost 2 hours for a barge to come through. Wilson lock is the big one, biggest drop in north America, 100 feet drop.

We got to Florence Alabama about a 19 nautical mile cruise today to a marina for fuel, pump out and a slip. They have a courtesy van we were able to use to do a Walmart run and dinner.




Saturday

We had a smooth cruise in the sunshine on the flybridge today to Safe harbor marina in Iuka, MS. We traveled about 39 nautical miles.

We were able to get our Amazon packages at the boat store here, where we had them shipped last week.. It was like Christmas!

We usually do our boat chores on Sat. We have to vacuum, mop, clean the bathroom, scrub the outside of the boat, etc.

We met a couple across from us. They aren't loopers, but we got to talking. They're from Colorado but she grew up in Utah and graduated from Brighton high the same year we did in 1981. Small world.

We paid the $6 again to watch the Utah game on sling. Go Utes! What a powerful win.


Sunday

We were able to get the courtesy van and get to church this morning in Corinth Mississippi. Small chapel, very small ward. It was nice to not have to bother anyone from the ward for a ride We also watched via zoom Drew and Carolyn speak for their homecoming talks in Arizona. They had a great mission.




We left the marina for our last leg down the river systems to Mobile AL and the Gulf of America. Right now, we are traveling on the Tennessee Tombigbee canal, Tenn tom for short. This canal was cut in 1985. Before that you had to go down the Lower Mississippi river 450 miles to New Orleans with a lot of commercial traffic. This part is a 234-mile manmade canal to connect the Tennessee river in Mississippi to the Tombigbee River in Alabama. We cruised 32 nautical miles to bay springs lake and anchored in Natchez trace recreation area. It's stunning. The weather is perfect about 80 deg, sunny. We got the dingy down. Ed has it down to a science now. It only takes 5 minutes to get the dingy in the water and another 5 to get the motor and battery put on. We went for a beautiful ride in the cove. We watched some NFL GAMES tonight…highlight reels then had a nice sleep at anchor.










YouTube Links:


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 1 America's Great Loop on LoveMeFender

Image
Dear LoveMeFender friends:   This BLOG is meant to be our personal journal for our great loop adventure to be shared with close friends and family.  You can also follow our adventures on YouTube where we will try to post a video every week or so. Search @LoveMeFender on YouTube.  Again, the intended audience is family and friends  mostly.   It is not intended to be entertaining or to go viral so beware of boredom. Tuesday Got all loaded, look at the pictures to appreciate how much stuff we were taking! First miracle, we got a bigger vehicle! The biggest one they had at the time Ed got a reservation was a 5 seater. This a cause of stress. But when we got there they had just gotten a Durango in, so much more space We had only been gone 6 hours when, Elise texts she has a leak in her basement! Thank goodness for awesome ward members who came to the rescue! 1 am drove through wicked thunderstorms. It was like driving through a waterfall!! We coul...
Read more

Week 2

Image
Week 2 July 21-27 Monday To answer the cliff hanger: we made it through the night without the anchor coming loose or "dragging". See the anchor track pic.  We didn't get much sleep. Between the heat, worry, and checking everything we were up a lot. We discovered the battery hooked to the inverter died at At 6 am, so we turned on the generator to charge the battery for the spare fridge, and the air conditioner. We got a couple of hours of decent sleep and then pulled up anchor to go back to the marina. We spent the whole afternoon running errands and gathering all the things we think we will need to get us through a week. We got a new anchor chain bid for $1275. We are leaving tomorrow and won't have a car any more. We will be relying on our scooters, so we won't be able to buy more than we can carry in a backpack. We did our first laundromat run. It's so much easier than when I had to use one almost 30 years ago, when we were living in our motorhome for a co...
Read more

Week 3

Image
Week 3 July 28- Aug 3 Monday We survived the night and the thunderstorms. Our radar and radio antenna makes us 25 feet tall and is a giant lightning rod. I was a little nervous. We pulled up anchor at 7 am. Today is a long cruising day. We headed up the Chesapeake across the Potomac River and across the Virginia border into Maryland. The winds were higher around 20 and the waves 3-5 feet. I worked on my personal history for an hour. I have 2 projects of history I brought with me. We cruised 7.5 hours to the Patuxent River and up to Solomon's Island. We docked at the Zahniser's marina. It has really nice amenities. We were able to do laundry and go for a swim. It's a little bit cooler today, high 80s and a little less humid. The cruising was really pleasant temperature wise. We traveled 70 nautical miles today. This crazy bird was just hanging out on the dock almost right outside our door for hours! Tuesday This morning we did some chores. Ed cleaned out all the sea strainer...
Read more