Musings & Helen Keller-still in Florence

For those of you with electronic nav systems, John was amazed that, at planing speed on the rivers, the chart changed about every 6 1/2 minutes.  It seemed that every time Mary asked what mile marker so she could compare our location on the paper charts, John had to tell her we were off one chart and the next was still coming up.  A BIG difference from our great lakes charts!

We haven't had tv for most of the trip.  Even when cable has been available, it usually required a cable box which had to be hooked up in the back of the tv and it has just not been worth the trouble. One of our tv's is digital, but even when we get a station or 2, the reception is not reliable and the signal fades and returns, fades and returns.  Even when we haven't moved the boat we may receive a station at night and have "no signal" in the morning.  PBS has been most reliable.  Children's programming has changed a little since Matthew and Benjamin used to watch Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers. John now knows that Marc Brown's Arthur is an aardvark and his new favorite superhero is Wordgirl.  When he said' "I saw her saw," and chuckled this morning during a home improvement show, Mary suggested he move to the old tv and watch "Somewhere in Time".  It's a good thing we brought our DVDs.

We visited Helen Keller's birthplace, Ivy Green, in Tuscumbia, AL.  Marc and Michele McCoy, loopers on Marc's Ark II from Galena, Il, joined us.  Helen was actually born in a small cottage near this house, but this is where she lived when Annie Sullivan came to teach her.  Since the homestead (although reduced from 640 to 10 acres) passed directly from the family to the city of Tuscumbia, many furnishings, clothing, etc. are original.  They even have what's left of the set of dishes that Helen didn't break during her first mealtime encounter with Annie Sullivan and the pump where Helen realized what the "fingerplay" with Annie meant.

Helen Keller was an amazing woman and her accomplishments are many.  In 1927 she challenged the Lions Clubs to help the blind so, the next time you drop your old glasses into a box at the library or post office, it's due to her challenge.  If you haven't seen the movie "The Miracle Worker", borrow it from your local library.

An item that we had not seen before, or at least didn't realize the purpose of, was this type of needlework fireplace screen.  According to our guide, beeswax was a common ingredient in makeup, to help cover pox scars.  Men used it to wax their mustaches.  If a person sat too close to the fire, the wax would begin to melt and hopefully one of your friends would warn you to "Mind your own beeswax" so you would know to move away from the fireplace.

We enjoyed happy hour on the dock with Theresa and Larry from Miss Lauren Grace (they live aboard their boat), Jane and Larry from Bavarian Cream, and Marc and Michele from Marc's Ark II.  We went to dinner at Dale's Restaurant with Marc and Michele.   Our triple A book warns not to judge this place by its exterior.  The food was excellent and they will give you a ride to and from the marina.  Between us we had ribs, steak, pork chop and chicken and they were all good.

Happy Birthday, Happy Anniversary, and Florence , Alabama

Today (Thursday, 9/22) is Mary's birthday.  Jane and Larry from Bavarian Cream had a party for her birthday and our anniversary last night.  John gave her Kindle books she's been coveting.  Matthew, Christine, Benj, and Sarah sent her 3 dvd's-Oklahoma, South Pacific, and The Dark Crystal.  Poor John will have to forego Northern Exposure for the next few nights.  There were e-mail greetings from Jackie and Jo (John's sisters), and a gift is waiting at home from her friend Jo in California.  Her sister, Theresa, sent her a text but since we don't pay for that service, we didn't find out until we talked to her on the phone a bit later. We will move from Clifton Marina today to Florence, AL, so John can take her out for a birthday dinner.

Clifton is a charming little town.  We managed to ride our bikes 6 1/2 miles, but there is only about 1 mile of sidewalk and only a few side streets, so we didn't manage our usual 10 mile ride.  General Nathan Bedford Forrest crossed the Tennessee River here and Pulitzer Prize winning author Thomas Stribling lived here.  His home is now the public library.  We had an all-night and all-day rain on Tuesday.  The captain of Satin Doll made a chocolate cake/marshmallow desert IN HER CROCK POT and we celebrated Jolly Tolly's loop finish.  The next day, there was almost as much water in Patches as there was when Matthew and Christine got married on Mackinac Island.

We picked up a hitchhiker when we were leaving Clifton, unfortunately he decided to get off at the gas dock.  If he was a little bigger and could make a dent in the spider population, we'd keep him.

This part of the Tennessee River is beautiful with high stone walls.

We found an interesting way to keep goats on the Tennessee River, you put them on an island, that way you don't need fences.

We passed Pittsburg Landing, where the battle of Shiloh was fought on April 6 and 7, 1862, between the armies of General Grant and General Johnson.  It was a great slaughter with 23,000 casualties for the Northern and Southern Armies.   (No helicopters in 1862)

We net a young man at Clifton who is doing the loop in a kayak, he left a couple of days ahead of us and we caught up with him 40 miles up the river,

We ran 100 miles to Florence Alabama today, the weather was perfect, this is the best day we have had on the river.  It was in the low 80's with no wind and the water was flat all day.  We went through the Pickwick lock, another 50 foot raise, and went into Pickwick Lake.  The lake is 55 miles long and is beautiful. This lock has a highway bridge directly overhead.

We arrived at the Florence Marina about 4:30, got our dock, and went out to dinner to celebrate Mary's birthday.  The restaurant had a live band and the food was fine.  While we were there a boat came in and had a tough time docking, when we got back to our boat we could see that it had lots of damage.  It looked like he went under something that was too low.  We were told later that tornado-damaged boats had just been released for repair by insurance inspectors, so maybe....

Here's our boat in Florence.  Brandy and Boreas came in the day after we did and Bavarian Cream the next day.

We had read about this project in a magazine about the rivers.  If you have an extra half-million lying around, you can buy into it and spend the rest of your days cruising the US rivers in your own condo stateroom.  Oh, yeah, monthly condo fees are only $1,200.00.

Today we went to see Alabama's only house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.  Our guide had actually been a caretaker at the house, so the tour was especially personal. We borrowed the marina's courtesy van and, yes, the check engine light is on.  You can certainly see his influence on his student, Alden Dow, in some of the houses Dow designed in Midland. 

Relaxing on the Tennessee River

Are we in the south?!  While we are on the topic of local cuisine, when we were in Grafton, IL, all the menus we saw listed fried ravioli as an appetizer.  We decided we had to try it and chose the place that listed theirs as "toasted" rather than fried.  Hey, like with John and his peanut butter on hot dogs and lunch meat, don't knock what you haven't tried!  The ravioli was served with a side of marinara (makes sense) and was quite good, but one serving was enough to have us imagining our cholesterol and blood pressure numbers spiking.

We stayed at Pebble Isle Marina for 2 days.  Besides the hot boiled peanuts, they have a marina restaurant that offers options other than "bar food" and deep-fried.  They are 1/2 mile from Tennessee's Johnsonville State Historic Park, which was the site of a unique military victory.  On November 4, 1864, Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his cavalry attacked and destroyed Johnsonville, a river port.  This is the only record of a naval force being engaged and defeated by by a cavalry force.  The Union lost 3 gunboats, 11 transports, and 18 barges.  Johnsonville disappeared when Kentucky Lake was created.  We had ridden our bikes, so explored some Civil War Redoubts, walked through the visitor center (which is being dismantled because a new one has been constructed on the highway, but still had a couple of displays) then left the park to ride our bikes on the road to Denver, the small community near the marina.

We borrowed the marina courtesy car and drove to the Wal-Mart in Waverly.  Neither of us likes shopping in Wal-Mart, but it was the only choice and we needed a few groceries plus anniversary cards for each other, as we may not be anyplace else before the 24th.  We have used the courtesy cars in 4 marinas.  2 of them had the check engine light on, one had the brake light on, and the other's "change oil" light was on.  All have had well over 100,00 miles on them, but have been the only way to buy needed supplies, as towns have been too far away or along busy highways, so we haven't wanted to bike or walk.  We're glad they've been available!

One of the boats in this marina looked like a small scale replica of a river steamboat.  The roof behind it is typical of the marinas here.  Seasonal slipholders have roofs over their slips both for sun protection in the summer and to keep any ice and snow off in the winter, as most boats stay in the water all year.  The whole pier you can see in this picture floated over against the restaurant in the spring floods 2 years ago. The poles the system floats on were simply not long enough and the water rose high enough to float the dock off the poles and away.  It was their newest dock and has their biggest boats. The poles are longer now.

The boat not only looked like a steamboat but actually uses the paddlewheel for propulsion, powered by a gasoline engine that probably ran farm equipment in the 40's.  If you're interested, it's for sale.

We enjoyed our time at Pebble Isle, but looked ahead on our charts.  We decided to move to Clifton Marina, which sounded as though there is a small community nearby.  The lake/river changes here, many small islands, LOTS of fishermen (it is Sunday, after all), and still those darn tows!  We appreciate the expertise of the tow captains and realize that much of the route we have been traveling and will travel are here to make possible the transportation of goods, but they are just so darn BIG!  There is plenty of room to pass comfortably here, unlike our experience on the Illinois River, but it is still intimidating.

We see more bluffs as we travel-it almost feels like driving in mountain foothills:

We are now tied up at Clifton Marina and RV Park.  It's small and John's parallel parking skills were, once again, proven.  The sailboat in front of Mary Frances IV is the afore mentioned Horison from Sweden.  The other boat, Tropical Breeze, is almost finished looping.

To offer a better view of the close quarters:

There is about 38 feet of dock space.  We need 42.  The dock doglegs just outside the bottom left of the picture.  We had to take the dinghy off to almost fit.  If the wind blows, Horison's bow and ours will be kissing.  We started to walk into town, but after 20 minutes of walking along the roads, we headed beck to the boat.  John rode his bike back toward town to choose a route for us to ride tomorrow.  He found a grocery store that had 3 peaches, so was able to procure the one we needed for peach slaw for dinner tonight.

Rain is predicted for the next couple days, so we'll probably stay a while.  Overdue thanks are due in this forum to John's sisters Jackie and Jo who are taking care of our house and mail.  We love you, ladies, and thank you enormously for helping us fulfill our dream.

Kentucky Lake

We enjoyed our down time at Kentucky Dam Marina.  John washed the boat and most of the lock crud stains came off.  The Illinois River scum line is off the dinghy and Mary gave the cabin and cockpit a good cleaning.  However, there was no place to ride our bikes and our walks consisted of circling the big boat launch parking lot and past the cabins and picnic shelters in Kentucky Dam State Resort Park.

Cruising Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake is more like the boating we're used to.

Even though there is Tennessee River current here, and it flows against the direction we're traveling, it doesn't affect the boat like the other rivers did.  We stayed at Kennlake State Resort Park Marina for 1 night.  We enjoyed it so much-like anchoring out but with the security of being tied to a dock (not to mention being able to run the air conditioner without firing up the generator) that we looked for another state park marina for our next stop and found Paris Landing State Park marina just over the Tennessee Border.  We understand these parks are at capacity during the summer but quiet right down when the kids go back to school.  As we entered the breakwall, we had a surprise, Paris Landing Coast Guard Station, with its big buoy tender, Cimarron and all the buoys stacked on shore  The coast guard shares this site with the Tennessee Valley Authority Police.

See how peaceful it is here, with the serenity and natural beauty?

You'd never guess there's a major highway 1/4 mile in front of us!  We had a nice long walk at Kennlake and a good bike ride here.  We stopped to look at the hotel and restaurant and rode directly back to the boat to request a ride to the restaurant for their lunch buffet.  Gotta love that fried okra and catfish and hush puppies!

We had a nice visit with Monica and Curt from Sweden aboard their sailboat Horison.  They shipped their boat to Baltimore and have been doing the loop in segments for 3 years.  They were next to us for a short time in Grafton, but their masts were down so they could cruise under the bridges on the way here.  The masts are up now for the rest of the trip.

The Cimarron left home port to work on buoys:

We took a walk and saw lots of ducks, most of them looked familiar, but these intrigued us:

We went back to the boat and on-line to identify them, but couldn't find anything resembling them.  John finally went up to the store to ask a ranger.  They are some kind of Chinese ducks that are evidently released pets.  No wonder we couldn't find them under "Tennessee ducks"!

This park has the most unusual picnic pavilion we've ever seen.  When the new bridge was built, and dedicated to someone else, it was decided to place one span of the old Scott Fitzhugh bridge in the state park.

It's hard to imagine that during the Civil War, there were no lakes here.  The dams were constructed in the 30's and in the 50's to help control flooding on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.  Whole communities were relocated and their homes, stores, farms now lie underwater.  In 1963, President Kennedy named the "Land Between the Lakes" a national recreation area.

Rain threatened all day, and we watched lightning bolts and flashes north and west of us until the skies opened up right above us and the wind blew and wow! what a storm!  We watched it for a while then Mary went into the cabin to read while John stayed up on deck to move towels around to catch the drips we get when it rains this hard and see if we needed to move to a building on land for shelter.  The storm slackened after about 40 minutes, but residual winds blew well into Thursday, delaying our planned departure.  The wind was blowing hard enough that it formed white caps on the 3 mile wide lake and tugged the buoys the opposite way from the way the current runs:

When we came into this marina, the water in the basin looked like the water on the lake. Today there is a noticeable difference:

Glad we're in the blue calm instead of the angry brown!

Tennessee River -Kentucky Lake-Land Between The Lakes

Monday the 12th of September we left Kentucky Dam Marina for a long run of 25 miles.

Two Kentucky Dam Marina Pictures:

Kentucky Lake Dam :

We went through the Barkley Lake Canal so we could say we were in the Cumberland River.

We thought our boat looked funny on laundry day!

Consumption, capacity and distance, oh my!

We hold 280 gallons of gasoline and at planing speed (25 miles an hour) we burn 33 gallons an hour, we have 228 miles to go before we can get fuel.  The math doesn't work out so we will be going slow most of the way. At 14 miles an hour we were burning 9 gallons an hour, the current really helped.  The bad news was at that speed we would only do 140 miles in 10 hours and we had 158 miles on the Mississippi, not to mention time on the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers before the next available gasoline.

Morning Mist 

Mississippi River in the morning

John got up at 5:30 so we could get an early start, but it was still dark.  It finally was light enough at 6:30 and we left. Fred, from Boreas, gave us a hand getting away from the dock.  We won't have to worry about locks until after the Ohio River.  The Mississippi River has a very strong current and there is much turbulence and many whirlpools.  The river also has many wing dams that keep the current in the channel and stop the buildup of sand bars, but contribute to the unpredictability of the water. 

Whirlpools:

Wingdams:

There was lots of traffic on the river including a deer who wanted to see what was on the other side.

The Mississippi was an adventure for Tuggsy and Baby Tuggsy, a gift from Shannon.  Here they are pretending to be cruising down the great river under their own power.

One of the few times we were running fast we raced this train but he beat us easily.  We tend to forget how much freight still moves by rail in this country, especially since in Michigan many former railroad beds have been transformed into hiking and biking trails

After 159 miles we made the Ohio River and started upstream, our speed was cut by about 7 miles an hour, we lost the current from the Mississippi and gained the current against us for the Ohio.  We traveled at 7 miles per hour.  Half the speed we were going on the Mississippi for the same fuel consumption. 


We have traversed under many railroad bridges, but this is the first time a train was going over as we cruised under.

We went 15 miles up the Ohio, which took us over 2 hours, and anchored for the night at about mile marker 966.   We had traveled 175 miles in thirteen hours, a very long day.  We anchored close to the Kentucky side out of the barge traffic and had a fairly quiet night.  This picture was taken at our anchorage.  Looks far from civilization, doesn't it? 

This is looking forward from our anchorage. This is a new dam which will replace 2 older ones.

We got an early start in the morning, all we had to do was pull the anchor and take off.  We had to go 32 miles to the Tennessee River, which doesn't sound like much until you do it at 7 miles an hour.  There are 2 locks in this 32 miles, but the Ohio River is high enough that they aren't using them right now.  They have the weirs lowered and boats just cruise over the dams.  We stopped at the public dock in Paducah, Kentucky, where John thought he would walk up to town to get a few things.  The only businesses in walking distance are restaurants and bars, so it was a short visit.   We continued another 22 miles and arrived at our largest lock so far. Kentucky Lock raises boats 57 feet.

We got to Kentucky Dam Marina about 5 PM and got gas and a slip for three nights, we need to clean the boat and rest.  The bad news is this is a dry county.  The good news is they have a courtesy car and the next county is "wet".  We did learn a new county designation here.  We were actually in a "moist" county which allows the sale of drinks by the glass so they can attract chain restaurants, which don't build where they can't serve alcohol.

This is the Mary Frances IV at the dock in another large floating marina with 442 slips.