Segue comes home

Thursday, October 16 - We had a pleasant cruise up through Watts Bar Lake to Caney Creek Marina. Our friends, Vicky and Chuck, were off cruising on their boat (a Californian, too!) and had offered their slip to us for the night. With the threat of showers that evening it was a welcome offer for Lucy's sake!

We had trouble this morning getting the dinghy back up on the boat and had towed it all day. The wench that pulls the dinghy up was slipping. Wayne worked with it after we docked that evening and slowly got it back up in its resting place.

Friday, October 17 - Today would be a short day. We left Caney Creek around 9 and arrived at Ft. Loudon Dam just as Bear Cat, a large towboat, had locked through with several barges.

We pulled into Ft. Loudon Marina and set about getting the boat cleaned up for homecoming!

Saturday, October 18 - We had invited about 10 couples to join us at Choto Marina for a celebration at 12 noon this day. As we paced our journey up the familiar Ft. Loudon Lake we were continually surprised at the changes/additions during our year's absence. More and more large homes are cropping up on both the Knox and Blount County sides.

As we rounded the bend nearing our home stretch we heard on the radio, "Detour, calling out to all Looper boats...Over." It was Pam and Jim from their boat, Detour...there to meet us and chronicle in pictures our trip back into Choto Marina! Pam and Jim will be doing the Loop in a year or so and we're dying to return the favor now!

Seeing our friends gathered at the dock as we came into Choto gave us an emotional experience equal to only a few other events on this trip (I'm thinking the entrance into NYC harbor and the Statue of Liberty comes close.) It was so nice to have the love and support from these people as we took this trip...and so nice for us to be able to share the experience with them. Some had visited us along the way and others had been regular contacts by phone or email. It meant a lot along the way, and it meant a lot to see them there today.

To all of them, and all of our friends and family who gave us well-wishes and offered prayers of safe keeping on our behalf...THANK YOU!

I had a camera ready to document the afternoon, but never took a picture. Fortunately, Jim and John were there and were kind enough to give us a photo chronicle of the day.
























We're back on the Tennessee River, back home. I'll summarize, for our benefit, some of the stats of the trip in a later blog entry. For now, we have to say that coming back to the Tennessee River and its lakes makes us realize even more how lucky we are. These are some of the prettiest cruising areas we've seen on our travels so far.

I read a quote from T.S. Eliot and it rings so true for us.

"And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."

Metropolis, IL, to

Saturday, October 4 -

A couple of things I've left out in previous blogs (at least I think I have.)

When we passed by Peoria, IL, we apparently also passed by a hotel called the Par-A-Dice Casino Hotel. How's that for a name?

We're pushing to get home at this point in the trip. Not that we don't have things to see in this area of the country...but this is our area of the country. Before this trip we had only traveled by boat as far as Chattanooga. We're already thinking about future (shorter) trips to areas on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers.

So this morning...we woke up to heavy fog. We'd planned to get out around 8, but had to wait for the fog to lift and that was more around 9:30 AM. Blue Max called Lock 52 to see when they could get us through and they said to gather up at the lock around 10 AM. We did...and proceeded to wait about an hour and a half before we could get in...and then it took about another hour to complete lockage. Bottom line: we left the lock at 12:30 PM and had about 50 miles to do before reaching Green Turtle Bay Marina. Oh, yeah, and that would be upstream, a-gin. And we had one more lock to go through. We figured we'd be lucky to get there before dark. We were lucky.

We turned off the Ohio onto the Cumberland and things began to look more like home. Hills, trees beginning to turn (though more brown than bright colors) and curving river bed. We quickly went through the last lock and, with Kismet in the lead because they'd been here before, we wove our way into Green Turtle Bay.

There were a number of looper boats already there. Some had been there for days and others just arrived and were planning to spend more time. We were there for one night.

Sunday, October 5 - We took our time this morning getting up and ready for the day. We had a loose idea of where we wanted to end up and thought we'd decide on the way how far to go. I took a nice walk into the town of Grand Rivers, KY. We visited with people we'd met along the way and hadn't seen for a while...then pulled the boat around to the fuel dock to take on some diesel. I walked over to the little restaurant at the marina and picked up a couple of sausage biscuits then we left at around 10:30 AM.

It was a beautiful day on the water...and we were feeling the pull of home. We'd never been on Kentucky Lake before, but it is beautiful...almost as pretty as our lakes nearer home. There were some very attractive coves and bays that would have made great anchorages, but we wanted to get some miles under our belt. We ended up picking out an anchorage called Leatherwood Creek at mile 73.6 on the Tennessee River. A marked channel took us in and we anchored in about 10 ft. of water with a very few homes in the vicinity. As the sun went down it got nice and cool and we enjoyed time on the back deck after taking Lucy to shore.

Monday, October 6 - We were up around 7 AM and leaving Leatherwood Creek around 9 AM. Oh...yeah...and when we took Lucy to shore this morning I nearly stepped on a snake weaving it's way from the water's edge towards the woods. Lucy was dallying around ahead of me and didn't even see it. I called to Wayne and he came over to help me herd Lucy back our way. She must have gotten a smell of the snake because she stopped and started smelling around. She was so mesmerized that she wouldn't "do" anything and we had to take her back to the boat with a promise of a walk by noon. I think I've identified the snake correctly now as a Northern water snake, a native of Tennessee. Harmless, so they say....

Well, with the adrenalin pumping we left Leatherwood Creek, bound upstream to Pebble Isle Marina in New Johnsonville, TN. It was a short trip of 23 miles and we were counting on borrowing the courtesy car that afternoon so we could take on provisions. We were there by noon and I took off immediately for the grocery store. With our cupboard restocked we took time to wash off some of the Mississippi mud we were carrying.

Around 4 PM about 6 other boats came in, including Our Turn. The marina restaurant was opening that evening for the crowd and most of us gathered there for a great meal and camaraderie.

Tuesday, October 7 - Pulled out of Pebble Isle Marina around 8AM with Our Turn. It looked like we were going to have rain most of the day. We were just hoping the "chance of thunderstorms" would hold off until we got to Clifton Marina, Clifton, TN...and they did.

I've heard of dock-o-miniums, but I hadn't seen RV-o-miniums before....



We were tied up by 3 PM and Ellen, Nat and I took the courtesy car into town for a look-see. (We would have walked but it looked really rainy.) After a brief stop at the Dollar General and grocery store we parked on Main St. and walked to the few open shops. The town is cute as it can be...a step back in time.



A short walk down the river took us to the Clifton Public Library which shares an historic home with the T.S. Stribling Museum.



Stribling won a Pulitzer Prize in 1933 for his novel THE STORE in. I was interested in reading more about the man and the book, and found this biography on a University of North Alabama Libary website: http://www2.una.edu/library/stribling/biography.html

He wrote a lot of short stories and had a very unique way of crafting a plot:

Stribling developed an elaborate method to help him produce his short stories. The system involved taking a white sheet of cardboard and dividing it into columns. The columns would consist of various settings, weather, sports, characters, locations, bad habits and good morals. He would shut his eyes and randomly run a wavy line across the columns. This approach insured originality and created some very interesting stories. During this time, he wrote as many as seven short stories a day.

(Isnt' there some sort of party game based on this idea???)

THE STORE received rave reviews when it was published in 1932...and it beat out MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY for the Pulitzer Prize. Sounds like a book worth reading...

The library was having a book sale that day, so of course we partook!

That evening we gathered for supper on the deck of Our Turn. Roy, Nat and Ellen brought out a bottle of champagne to toast our crossing our wake tomorrow. (They are stopping at Pickwick and we're anchoring further upstream.)

Wednesday, October 8 - Our Turn and Segue left Clifton Marina just before 8 AM. I was hoping the marina office/restaurant would be open before we left so I could seek out some leftover cornbread or chicken and dumplings from their dinner the night before. Ellen and Wayne had said it looked really good.

It was a beautiful day of travel. A little foggy at the first, from the night of rain, but that soon cleared up. This is a shot of Our Turn as we left that morning.



There was a most peculiar sighting today. A naked (at least he appeared to be) man was standing on the left descending bank with a pair of binoculars focused our way! Wayne, Roy, and Ellen all saw him. I was on the phone and missed it. I think I was the lucky one. Welcome to Tennessee??!!

We passed by some really neat signs for Mermaid Marina...




Pickwick Lock was a ten minute wait and at around 1:30PM we found ourselves on Lake Pickwick. What a lovely lake! Funny how coming through this way last December it didn't look so pretty!

Our Turn pulled off at Pickwick State Park for a night "on the hook" and a meal at the park restaurant that has a reputation for great food.

We were waving goodbye as we continued on up the lake to Bear Creek and a beautiful anchorage.


We're hoping to catch up with them again in Chattanooga.

When we passed mile 215 and the turn off to the Tenn Tom we officially "crossed our wake" and have completed the Great Loop. Now we just need to make our way on up to Knoxville.

A shower came up just before we set anchor and we had the most beautiful rainbow arching over the creek.





We've completed the Great Loop Route and are headed home with memories that will last us a lifetime...and friends that we hope to keep as long. It seems appropriate that there was a rainbow for the occasion.

We'd left Choto Marina on October 8, 2007...also auspicious that we're crossing our wake exactly one year later...

Thursday, October 9 - As we returned to the boat from our morning trip with Lucy we heard the anchor alarm sound. Yep! The boat was on the slow slide to the bank. We'd had a lot of wind action during the night and it must have loosened our anchor's hold.

Wayne quickly started the engines and I held the boat in place while he pulled up anchor and hoisted the dinghy.

Today we went through two locks, Wilson and Joe Wheeler. Wilson is a large (read: deep) lock and it took almost an hour to get into and through that one. Joe Wheeler was a bit faster and we were anchored in another cozy cove near Joe Wheeler State Park by 4:30PM. No phone or internet connection in this cove...but so nice otherwise!

Speaking of internet and thinking of blogging...I'm using ScribeFire to blog with on days when I have no connection. A Firefox add-on, it records the blogging on my computer and will transfer to Blogger when we're connected again. Another tool I'm trying on this trip, at the recommendation of a speaker at the Charleston AGLCA rendezvous, is BookSmart. A free download, BookSmart "slurps" my blog entries from Blogger to store on my computer. (I've worried about having my trip "archive" on a dot.com site...) At the end of the trip I can organize the text and pictures in BookSmart to create a memory book. I have every intention of doing that. Question is, how long will it take??? :-)

Friday, October 10 - Traveled from anchorage near Joe Wheeler to an anchorage at mile 351 behind Goat Island. We didn't get into the anchorage until around 5 PM. Fortunately, there's no competition for anchoring at this time of year...despite the fact that it's the perfect time of year to anchor out!

Passing through Decatur, AL, we requested the railway lift bridge to open for us. the guy there is the same one we talked to in December 2007...a real character. We told him we'd gone under the bridge in December and he said, "Pretty long vacation!" Yes, it was!

Saturday, October 11 - Another good day of travel. As usual, we started out with a couple of options for the evening. We'd considered going all the way to Hales Bar Marina (not that that was our first choice, but marinas are sparce in the area). Instead we decided to go to an anchorage just above Nickajack Lock at mile 425.

It was 5 PM when we got to the lock...and by the time we got through it, anchored and took Lucy to shore it was after 6 and getting dusky. This anchorage is near a recreation area so we have a dock to use when we take the dinghy in to shore. Again, we're the only boat anchored here.

The scenery on the trip today was refreshing...the mountains showing up more and more every day.



And we got back into Tennessee today after traveling down a ways into Alabama on the river. One of our friends from Florida commented that she hadn't realized how far south we had to go to get back home to Knoxville by river! Certainly not the most direct route!

Approaching Nickajack Lock the current picked up so that we thought we were back on the St. Lawrence River heading into Montreal! The rpm's were up to 2000...and we were just making 9 miles per hour!

Our home is at mile 612 on the Tennessee River so we're still almost 200 miles away. Tomorrow we'll get to Island Cove Marina at Chattanooga, TN, where we'll stay for a day or two while they tweak some fittings on the fuel tank. Then we're home to Knoxville, hopefully by Saturday, October 18!

Sunday, October 12- I could swear the colors changed in this cove over night. At any rate, it's a beautiful morning. We're up and at 'em by 8:30AM...headed for Island Cove Marina.


The sky this morning was streaked with clouds making it easier to see the change in color from the horizon up. At the horizon level it's more cerelean. Further up it becomes deeper in color and more like cobalt blue. Straight overhead it looks much darker...an ultramarine blue. Thank you, Mary Baumgartner! :-)




They call the area we're traveling throught today the area they call the "Grand Canyon of the Tennessee." Eagles were spotted several times as we went through some narrow sections of the river.

Going by Signal Mtn. we could easily see some of the gorgeous homes there...



Passing through downtown Chattanooga we admired the bustle on the water and recognized a lot of changes have been made to the waterfront over the past couple of years. Chattanooga is a worthy destination for loopers...


Chicamauga Lock was something else! They are rebuilding the lock so the entrance was like a maze through water-bound construction machines. When we finally got in, there were eight boats that wanted to lock up and only 4 bollards, 2 on each side. We rafted off the remaining four...and the lock suddenly looked like some of the locks we saw in Canada!


Island Cove was ready for us and we nestled in on Houseboat Row for the evening. Tomorrow we'll talk to Terry, the service manager, and see how long we'll need to be here.

Wednesday, October 15 - We got all our issues taken care of and the hull cleaned and waxed. The boat looks great! We stayed a couple of nights at the marina inn while the boat was "on the hard." And I took Tuesday off to go off with Ellen, Nat and Roy for a tour of Chattanooga's most popular sites: Ruby Falls, Rock City, and the Incline Railway. We had a great day, including a great late lunch at the Purple Daisy BBQ place in St. Elmo, TN.

We were back in the water today by 4 PM and made our way a couple of hours upstream to an anchorage just past Sale Marina on Sale Creek near Soddy Daisy, TN.

Havana, IL, to Metropolis, IL (Superman, where are you???)

On Monday, September 29 they lifted the restrictions on the Illinois River from mile marker 101 to 80. It was afternoon that day when the announcement came so we decided to stay at Tall Timbers until the next morning to leave.

We'd had time over the past couple of days to check out the town. A cute place with some gorgeous homes. I walked most of Plum Avenue one day and took pictures of some of the houses. We breakfasted on Monday morning at the Lunch Box Cafe, then I visited the Havana Public Library for a quick pass through their book sale.



Tuesday, September 30 - Six boats left at O'dark:30 that morning (well, it was really more like 6:45 AM): Mistress, Grettatude, Marbles, Segue, Our Turn, and Blue Max. We set out for our 120 mile trip to Grafton Marina, mile marker zero on the upper Mississippi. We had one lock to be concerned with, but it was another wicket dam and we were able to move straight through.

The trip was long, but fairly uneventful. Well, let me think about that. Blue Max would beg to differ. They were the last of 5 boats going under a railway lift bridge when the bridge started lowering! What a feeling!! Fortunately, they had time to clear the bridge, but I'm sure they'll never forget THAT bridge!

Then there was the (n)ice pass Our Turn made to Danny's Fault. Danny's Fault, with Judy and Rob, had been anchored out a couple of nights waiting out the lifting of restrictions. During that time they'd run out of ice...and had suggested it might be nice if someone from Tall Timbers bring them some ice on the way down. Ellen and Roy on Our Turn fixed up a bag of ice when we saw Danny's Fault ahead of us that day and Ellen tossed the ice to them in this close pass.



There was less debris than on our trip to Tall Timbers on Saturday, but it was harder to spot. This is what the water looked like for much of the trip. Can you find the debris???



One of the day's highlights was seeing a flock of white pelicans. Susan on Marbles had radioed back their location so I was ready with the camera... Can you believe what cute creatures these are??? And they have such attitude...


We arrived at Grafton Marina at around 5:30 PM...120 miles later. We all gathered up in the restaurant for supper and plans for the next day. This was our last night traveling with Marbles since Sue was going to a college reunion and Tom was staying at Grafton for a week until she came back to resume the trip. We'll sure miss their guiding of the "fleet" as we make our way down the Mississippi...and look forward to catching up with them at sometime in the future.

Wednesday, October 1- October 1st!!?? Gads, we're ready to be on the Tennessee River!

Today we made it down to Hoppies at mile 158. Our Turn, Grettatude, Mistress and Kismet left at around 7 AM, while Blue Max and Segue waited until around 8:15 AM. We all congregated at Hoppies that afternoon after a beautiful day on the water.

We passed by Alton, IL, birthplace of our friend Dana. They have a big riverboat casino on the waterfront.


We saw some of the biggest tow boats and loads that we've ever seen. These tows throw a wake that goes on forever and makes us think of Lake Michigan!


The clouds today were really neat...



Locking through the two locks was quick and painless. (Well, again Blue Max was the adventurous one in the group. When we got to the Chain of Rocks Lock we were instructed to enter the larger chamber. We entered first and went about half way in on the starboard side, aiming at what we assumed was a bollard. When we got to the opening we realized it was a ladder instead...and headed on up to the next spot. We radioed Blue Max but they had already passed the available bollards on our side of the lock so they ended up floating out free in the lock while we went down the 12 ft.! The lock master said it was OK...so another "first" for Blue Max!)

After the locks we went through the busy St. Louis, MO, waterfront area...

And saw the arch...



Hoppies is quite the place...Here are some of my favorite shots from there...



Barges strung along beside the Mississippi River...



and Fern, the legend, to meet with all the new folk and tell them how to manage as they go down the river. Here we are taking it all in...


We met the nicest guy at Hoppies. Jim has been a biking enthusiast for years and has recently decided to take up boating. He made this boat by buying a houseboat hull and topping it off on his own. He has a solar panel, head, galley...all the basics. He's come over 700 miles already from his home in South Dakota by way of the Missouri River and is headed down the Mississippi to New Orleans. What an adventure! Here's Jim's boat...



Thursday, October 2 - All six boats left out soon after 7:30 AM and headed downriver for the anchorage 110 miles down called Little River Diversion Channel. Another good day on the water. We pulled in around 4:30 PM. We let the dinghy down and took Lucy to a nearby shore...very loose rocks, but Lucy managed just fine. Tomorrow we'll look for a better spot. Looks like a lot of mud around here...

Today we passed by Chester, Missouri...home of Popeye the Sailorman, and Cape Girardeau, Missouri, home of Rush Limbaugh. We saw neither. :-)

We also saw a lot more of the white pelicans....



Friday, October 3 - Mistress, Grettatude, Our Turn and Kismet left as soon as the fog lifted (around 8:45 AM) while Blue Max waited for us to take Lucy in and pull up the dinghy.

The trip to shore this morning wasn't pretty. Mississippi mud! I came back with my shoes caked in mud. I got that while "auditioning" a spot for the LuLu. As it turns out, we ended up dropping her off the boat at a likely spot, letting her do her thing, then pulling her back into the boat. The dinghy was filthy! I was filthy! Lucy had filthy feet!

Today we traveled 48 miles down the Mississippi to the intersection of the Ohio River, where we turned up and traveled almost 40 miles on it before we stopped across from the Fort Massac State Park, IL. (Actually only 5 of us went up the Ohio. Mistress headed on down the Mississippi for New Orleans.)

The current on the Mississippi was awesome, again. We were doing over 16 mph at what would normally have been a 10 mph speed. Turning onto the Ohio the mph dropped to 8.5 since now we were going UPSTREAM.

As we neared our destination we spotted a tow boat trolling for Asian carp. They had a net out and were catching the fish as they jumped out of the water. See the fish jumping off the back of the boat!?


Earlier in the day we saw an eagle soaring ...



Our anchorage is near the town of Metropolis, IL. Yes, it is the home of Superman!!! OK, I'm due a sighting. I'll let you know how it goes...