October 3-5

October 3--Another calm and peaceful night at anchorage, but slightly interrupted by coyotes or wolves fighting on the shoreline near us. Our leisurely departure commenced at 8: 45 am. A real marina is in our plans for tonight by the name of Great Harbor which is just below the Pickwick Lock on Pickwick lake. We are only going to travel about 25 miles including one lock. Along the way we passed the Shiloh National Military Park where the Civil Wars first major battle took place in the western theater. Over 100,000 soldiers from the North and South were embattled here with a total of 23,000 casualties on both sides. There is no place to dock the boat and you need a car to drive from one monument to the other. Our journey was accompanied by another delightful day with a high of 80+ degrees. We called Pickwick lock about 20 minutes out and the lockmaster said she would have the lock ready when we got there. True to her word we cruised into the lock and were the only boat to lock through. After the gates were closed another looper arrived and also wanted to lock through. I called the lockmaster and and told her we would not mind waiting if she wanted to open the gates. She sighed, said she had already let 2' of water in, but after some thought she said that would be fine. This rarely happens since once they start the locking process they don't stop. Grand Harbor Marina is upstream 9 miles from Pickwick Lock at the junction of the Tennessee River and the Tennessee-Tombigbee waterway. Chip from the Marina met us and wanted to know if we needed the courtesy car. I said about the only thing I need is a haircut. He said he was going to get his haircut and I could go along. Well it turned out he had missed his haircut appt so to make a long story short we followed him in the courtesy car to his hairplace--it was about 20 miles away and located in Burnsville MS. May not find that on the map but you may see Iuka or Corinth MS. I got my haircut and Sharon and Judy did as well. Very nice marina. Cable TV but no Verizon internet service. We had a very strong signal but apparently not the right flavor, which is normally not a problem, but apparently they were not talking to each other properly. The courtesy car was a 10 passenger van which we put to good use this evening. One Oliver II (Oliver & Sally Miller), Wonderland (Phil & Alice Premier), Mascot(Scot & Mary Coles) and the four of us piled in the van and went to Freddy T's (a Jimmy Buffet knockoff) for dinner. Very good. Interestingly Scott & Mary are a younger couple that have taken a years sabbatical from work to do the loop. The picture is of one of the Older Mansions overlooking the Tennessee River

October 4th. A planned layover day. The girls did laundry on the onboard laundromat. Don helped them out by taking some laundry up to laundry at the marina. There was a computer at the marina store that had internet access so I did a little required on line banking. Otherwise it was a restful day, also looking at the charts to determine where we would stop tomorrow. We again docked in a "larger than us" row of boats. Each boat had a nice patio and a set of table and chairs so the four of us had our cocktails and dinner on the patio (steaks but no one could remember where bought them). Very delightful day. Partly cloudy. We are under a covered dock. Covered docks seem to be the norm down here. No rain in sight. Just very warm weather.

October 5..If we were headed for Mobile Alabama we would head south (turn right) from

the Tennessee River to the Tennessee-Tombigbee waterway. That is not our plan right now. Instead we will continue on up River to about MM 275 to Joe Wheeler State Park where the looper rendezvous will take place later on this month. Our location at the moment is MM 215. 2 locks and 60 miles away. We could get caught in a situation where if there was a delay in locking through a night arrival could be a possibility and that is not a pleasant experience. A stop at the Florence Alabama Marina would be in order. In the last 2 days we have been in MS, TN and now AL. Florence is at MM 256 so a journey of 41 miles and no locks is ahead of us. A partly cloudy and a pleasantly windy day with a high 86. Arrival at Florence Marina was about 2pm. Shortly after our arrival the harbor was swarming with bass boats returning from a bass fishing tournament. At one point I counted 60 boats waiting to load their boats on their trailers. A total of 203 boats are entered in this tournament which will continue tomorrow. The picture is of the competitors keeping their fish alive until they are weighed in. They must be alive at the weigh in. After they are weighed they are dumped back in the river. Tonight we went to dinner with Sea-Knight(Tom & Gerry) a local Italian Restaurant. Very good shrimp prepared Italian style. The downtown was adrift with people. They had lots of sidewalk art vendors. Tomorrow we are off to Joe Wheeler state park