So while I did internet things, Susan was a whirlwind of activity doing laundry, home made soup for lunch, cleaning the bathroom, posting pictures, making dinner and more pictures. We both got naps in so it wasn’t all work.

It was very windy and cold out with rain a few times during the day. A good day to be inside where it was warm.

Happy Birthday Mike!!

A great day, one of our best on the trip

We started off the day by getting up late and getting breakfast. Pushed off the dock at 7:30, almost two hours past what has become our “normal” time to head out.

Coasted past the other boats in the marina and into the flat water of Mobile Bay. Ahhh, 8 feet of water, I feel like I’m back in the Chesapeake. We do a 20 mile run down the bay, autopilot is happy, I’m not punching the +1/-1 or +10/-10 button every three minutes as we snake around a river channel.

Seagull attack with three pelicans in tow. Forgot how much they follow boats around. In this case our props are picking up stuff off the bottom and are flipping shrimp and small fingerlings to the surface. The Quo Vadimus buffet is open, all you can eat!!.

We have some left over bread, so I taunt the gulls into crashing into each other while they dive for potato bread lofted off the stern. Pelicans are cool, they don’t buy into the bread frenzy, they keep fishing the wake, eating all they want.

Soon we pick up ICW marker 120 and turn east. Bye bye long rivers, so long Mobile, this tub is headed to Florida, land of sunshine and seafood. So happy the rivers are behind us.

Our first entry into the coast has dolphins swimming with us. Gulls are gone, they know the worlds coolest mammal is eating their lunch before it comes up to them. Dolphins slide through the shallow water with us, once it gets deep and we are not pushing lunch up from the bottom they are done with us and head back to the next boat that will provide them lunch.

Since this is an easy trip, I have VHF 16 on to listen to other boats. Habits have the other radio on 13 listing for tows. Who tows through the ICW. Turns out that fuel barges for the area are regular traffic in the area. Sadly, they speak English, we are spared Southern mumble and the promised Cajun drawl. We waited while two passed and then went around. A little scary moment when the depth finder drops below 3, but the tow in front says “yall push through that low spot, it’s just mud” and we are through.

Next low area we acquire more dolphins for a short feeding time and then they are gone.

I’m trying to be mindful of the locals so I go back to no wake on a regular basis. We had a big Viking come towards us and even he downed the throttle to skate past us. Souther Manners at their finest.

We work our way down the ICW and then into the bay the Orange Beach Marina is located. I feel like I’m back in Canada, watching the 20′ wide channel and making the turns when needed. Down the long channel past the ½ million dollar boats and into Orange Beach Marina. Nice covered slip, we will be happy here for the next 5 days. Restaurant on site and some spa services. We are good!

Rapid boat docking, cross tie, check the bumpers, and we are on the road in the loaner car at 12:30 PM.

Get the rental car and our next stop is at Lambert’s, home of the “Thrown Roll” What a hoot. Order food (protein and 1 or two sides) and they bring you more sides (white beans, fried potatoes, fried cabbage, deep fried okra) to the table. You want more bread wave your hand over your head and they toss you one from across the room. A massive amount of food for $9.99 to $12.99

Food was good, but we had our extras boxed the leftovers for later (aka dinner tonight) u

With two cars we split to have our own fun days. Susan headed off to the outlet mall to get new pants and sneakers for me and jeans and shoes for her. Plus some other stuff.

I headed the rental car east to Pensacola, the Blue Angels were doing their last two shows of their season. Due to the car GPS dumping me in the wrong space I had a chance to miss the show. But I ended up at Fort Barrancas that is on the property. I had a great view of the airspace (where they fly super low) and all of the precision movements. I got some great pictures of the show. Well when I could figure what they would do. Lots of the show is the 4 main doing a formation and 5 & 6 coming from some unexpected direction about 800′ overhead. They are loud and scare the crap out of me.

I’ve seen the Thunderbirds (USAF) and the Angles (USN), I need to give the nod to the Angels. They are always moving, lots of point rolls and high movements. Look for pictures in a few days.

My bonus since I was not out in the heavy spectator area that I had an easy drive back to the boat. I hit the local Publix and Win-Dixie stores up for beer and wine, they are not very impressive as the others we found.

I did get my beard trimmed at one of those walkin places. She did a great job and got rid of the pointy beard that made me look like a retired demon. So far barber places have been less problem than I though. And today I look handsome!

Dinner back at the boat was leftovers from Lambert’s. Very good the second time.

After Dinner I did a load of wash. I’ve learned that if you have two free hours and a washing machine, do a load. Machines were close, so it wasn’t a big deal.

We had a great sunset, another one to welcome us to warmer climates.

Excited about NOLA in the morning, Susan has been rocking Trip Advisor and other places, so we will have good places to go.

When we get back on Wednesday we will go to the Naval museum and then work on moving West on Thursday. The side trips make sense. It’s 600 worth of fuel to go and another $600 to come back. I can get a lot of car, hotel and food for $1200.

Yesterday started off the same with hearing Passage on the radio at 5AM. We were both up since when you go to bed at 7PM and get 9 hours of sleep you are up at 4AM.

No fog this morning, but there was a tow coming into the lock below us. Estimates were it would be 6:47AM before we got into the lock.

That gave us both time to get showers and for Susan to reheat the dirty rice from last nights dinner and put an over easy egg on top of it. What a great breakfast, gooey eggy goodness with healthy rice!!

The lock was full today. We had Passage , Fracas (sail boat we had met in Green Turtle Bay), Mara Beel , Estrellita , Roundabout , Miss Ginger , El Nido and us along the dock wall.

The last boat Stella is a couple from Romania/Switzerland that are doing the loop. I had talked briefly with them last night at Bobby’s. There wasn’t room for them on the lock wall. Our extra fenders were still down from having Mara Beel along side, so I waved them into position next to us.

Soon we were out and gone. Susan and I both left out a whoop, our last lock for 5 more months!!

We motored down the river. The Black Warrior river is a twisty turny river as it winds it’s way through Alabama. Once again it was a bird day with lots of herons.

Turns out that herons are no longer our go-to picture. We are on the hunt for gators. Since yesterday when we missed the two gator, its been a gator obsession.

We passed thousands, well OK hundreds (well really maybe two dozen) herons, not a picture of one.

Gators, gators, gators. Find the gator. All day, no gators.

But we did see a pair of Bald Eagles along the shore. I called them as males, they were side by side, clearly fishing and there were beer cans higher up on shore. If that’s not two guys out goofing off on a Wednesday, I don’t know what is. Susan did get some great pictures of one of them in flight.

Once section of the river makes almost a figure 8 with the four back to back horseshoe loops. Look up Newman and Horseshoe bends. Not really sure why the ACoE didn’t just make two quick cuts and get rid of 6 miles of river, but they didn’t. Of course we met tows in that section and they were great about letting us know when it was safe to pass. The tow fills the entire loop, so there is just a few minutes when you can zoom by. The tow Captains in this section have a tough job, but everyone of them has been nice and very friendly on the radio.

We passed some cool things along the river:

– Massive coal fired power plant. It was huge and there were three barges out front that had coal being unloaded. There was a crane that was taking massive bites of coal and dumping it into a conveyer system. I wondered how many barges a day they go through.

– Huge dredging project, but it might be a pipeline replacement project. There was a huge dredging barge and three small tugs moving pipes around. But there was huge lenghts of pipe before and after the dredge. It wasn’t clear if they were dredging the chanel or digging down to old pipe and pulling it up, putting new pipe down.

– Scrap iron recovery. There were three sets of cranes that were unloading barges that had scrap steel. The magnetic hooks would go down, grab a load of iron/steel, lift up and dump it onto a conveyer system that took it away. There were huge smoke stacks, not sure if it was a remelt or they were doing smelting of new ore at the same time.

– But no alligators.

We swung into the Tensaw River about 3 PM. It is about ¼ mile wide and runs from where we are (40 miles above Mobile) almost to Mobile. It’s not navigable the entire length, but it does make a good place to stay the night. It makes a great place to anchor out, there is no wind and very little current. Since we are below the last lock (yay us!) the level goes up and down with the tide. There are 8 of us anchored in the river.

We’ve seen these smaller white birds on the trip. I had assumed they were seagulls, since we are rapidly approaching the coast. They are about the size of a blue-jay. They hover over the water about 10 feet up then fold their wings and drop into the water like a rock. They are up flying again in about ½ a second. I’ve seen two with small fish, so I guess it works. Very strange to watch.

Susan tried fishing again with no success. Her goal was to catch a fish and then troll it to get the attention of a gator. But she was driven inside by mosquitoes that came up from the riverside.

Dinner was meat loaf from Mariano’s market in Chicago. It was like eating meatballs that had been formed into a loaf, the loaf was much more dense than what Susan normally makes. It was good, but wasn’t hers. What was hers, was the fried cabbage and onions and mashed potatoes. It was a great meal.

We are just going to hang out after dinner. The last few days of up at 4, going by 5 and then a 11 hour day has gotten old fast. We have a short run of about 6 hours to the marina, lots of time to find a gator.

Looking forward to a break the next two days.

The plan was to call the lock at 5:30 AM. At 5, we heard the engines of Passage fire up and head out the basin. I turned the radio on and listened as they called the lock. Others in the group heard the same, so we all started throwing off lines and getting ready to leave early.

Quo Vadimus was off the dock at 5:30 heading towards the lock. It was still pretty dark, but getting lighter. We followed yesteday’s GPS track, and the lights along the shoreline. There were 7 of us in the lock Passage , Mara Beel , Roundabout , Estrellita , Miss Ginger , Onward and us. We got tied up, locked down and were out the gate by 7AM. Another night locking under our belts!

We locked down and into the fog. With the Radar on we tiptoed down the river. I kept the speed down so the boat behind us wouldn’t get lost. He said later he wanted to get on the radio and say “Thanks Foster, you have the biggest orange balls.” The two balls at the stern were all he could see in the fog.

We’ve seen lots of eagles on this trip, today was no exception. They are amazing to watch in the sky and Susan got some great pictures.

Most of the day was winding in and out of the cuts of the river. It’s pretty amazing how the river twists and turns around.

We were soon split into two groups with Mara Beel , Roundabout , Estrellita ahead of us. We kept up averaging about 8.6 knots, just over 10 miles per hour.

Early in the afternoon we passed a tow that said, “Y’all look for that gator on the starboard side” and the search for gators was on! We looked for the next two hours and didn’t see any. The crew of Mara Beel , kept saying “Gator!” but we didn’t see anything. I’m thinking they were leading us on, Their admiral takes great pictures, we’ll check and see if she has any.

Around 3 PM Roundabout and Estrellita dived into a little cove for the evening. Mara Beel and Quo Vadimus kept going to the world famous Bobby’s Fish Camp.

When the Tenn-Tom was being created there was a small marina at Demopolis. They could see the advantage of getting boaters to come up the river, the problem is the distance. So they sought out and found a partner to set up a ½ stop on the river. Since then Bobby’s Fish Camp has grown with the number of cottages and places to put RV’s. They have a pretty decent season with early spring, late fall hunters and the boating groups across the summer.

The “marina” part is only 150′. With two boats already there we were able to grab the last dockside slip. We put our locking fenders out on the other side and quickly had Mara Beel tied up next to us.

The crew of Mara Beel hosted Docktails on their boat. We were joined by the Captain of El Nido , he is another single handing sailor on the loop.

One of the snack items was Door County Cherry Salsa. We had seen lots of stuff made in Door County WI, and almost everything had Cherry’s in it (pies, bread, cheese, sausages, etc). The salsa was very good and we’ll see if we can order some over the internet.

There is a restaurant on site that serves the “Worlds Best Fried Catfish”. Sadly the restaurant is only open Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Susan made us pork cutlets and asparagus. Since we are in the south she also made dirty rice (rice, bell pepper and browned ground beef. Very very good.

With a 10 hour cruising day under our belts and another one schedule for Wednesday we were both in bed early.

Only two more days on the river!

The after dinner fishing didn’t go any better than the before dinner fishing did, so there was no need to stay.

I had a restless night since this was our first time at anchor since Lock 52 on the Ohio. So I was up a few times to check. Susan also was restless since she got up twice to check. We both had the same report. Very calm, very nice night, sky full of stars. We both now appreciate how much light pollution we have at home and how amazing the night sky is in places without civilization.

The morning was neat, we got a nice sunrise, with wisps of fog lifting from the water. Which grew into heavier fog. Checked with the lock and they said it was pretty foggy. There was a northbound tow coming our way, so watch for him in the fog. They were in the process of locking down a south bound tow, and then the lock would be ours.

So we got pack up, heaved anchor (actually Susan uses the anchor hoist, she pushes buttons and sprays the goop off) and we headed down the river.

We met the tow and the tug had a unique 8 sided pilot house, looked like a mini spaceship on top of a tow boat. Very cool looking, hoping that Susan got a picture of it to share.

Speaking of pictures, I don’t know if you noticed but Susan is taking a picture of every heron that we see on the trip. I think she’s going to use the pictures to get a job with the National Wildlife Federation as an ornithologist. Or with the right wing conspiracy theory people that there is only one heron on the east coast, and she has the pictures to prove it.

Anyway, as we went by the anchorage that was full yesterday all the boats came tumbling out to follow us down. The 7 of us filled the lock nicely at 8:15 AM. I said to the lock-master that I had heard there was free breakfast. He replied that it was from 6-8AM and we had missed it by minutes. But he said, he’d look us up in Florida and would buy us breakfast there. Nice to see some of the lock-masters have a sense of humor.

Out of the lock at 8:45. We opted not to stay with Onward and Sandpiper, Loopers that we’ve seen a few times. I took the lead and Sage followed at a little over 10 miles an hour down the river.

Just after the lock we saw a young buck deer in the water. He was standing there and then became spooked by the boats. He bounded along the shore and then found a place to bound up the hill and over the embankment. Very cool to watch.

Other than 2.3 million herons, not much to see for the first 3 hours. We came upon the white cliffs at Epps. They are white limestone that they dug the waterway out of. Very cool looking. Even better for pictures was that there were herons along the shore in front of them.

The second 3 hours went by with more herons. We are still in early fall here, the leaves of the trees have not really started to change. We were surprised by noises along the bank, and it was a family of wild pigs. Susan saw the momma pig and 4 little pigs. They were on the shore but as we drew closer they ran into the brush. We could hear the squeals and snorts as we went by.

There are a number of summer cottages along the shore, but about 20% of them are in danger of falling into the water due to erosion. It’s a shame to see such neat properties get claimed by nature.

Highpoint of the day was at 12:40 PM, we passed mile marker 225. We are now half way down the Tenn-Tom waterway to Mobile!!!

We got into Demopolis Yacht Basin also known as Kingfisher Bay. We got 145 gallons of fuel at the cheapest price so far on the trip, $3.49 per gallon. I had budgeted for $5 a gallon, our average is now down to $4.27 so this price is a bonus.

We did some odds and ends around the boat (like filling the water tank) and then it was time for Docktails. There were 8 boats and enough snacks for about 15. It’s always nice to meet new Loopers and listen to their adventures.

The crew of Mara Beel got a car for dinner tonight and we went for Mexican. It was good, we all got a variety of dishes that we all enjoyed.

We wanted to hit the local grocery. Where we all come from the grocery is open 24 hours, in Demopolis, only until 8PM. Next time we need to flip the order that we do things.

Highlight of the evening was transportation. The marina is pretty spread out so they have U-Drive golf carts around the property. It was fun zooming along from the main basin up to the fuel dock to get the loaner car. While we were returning the car one of the tow boats was at the fuel dock. Where I get a few hundred gallons, they get a few thousand. That would explain the cheap fuel prices, when you pump out 20-30 thousand gallons a month you get a much better rate.

The crew of Roundabout set us up for the lock call at 5:30 AM so we can get out first thing. We will be anchoring out two nights and a stop a Bobby’s Fishcamp on Wednesday. Should be an exciting way to complete our Tenn-Tom adventure.

A close friend, Molly Doggus, passed away, I’ll miss her “talking” greetings when I come over to visit.