October 18th
On October 5th we arrived at the Green Turtle Bay
Marina in Grand Rivers, Ky with our two buddy boats and found a large gathering
of other Loopers. We are finding that the further we get down the rivers the
crowd of Loopers is growing as the season of the Loop is getting closer to the
end for most of the Loopers who started in Florida. Many Loopers who started further
north on the east coast tend to plan to spend the winter in Florida or the Bahamas
and continue on to finish their Loop in the spring. They call returning to the port you started
in “Crossing your Wake”. We will be crossing our wake in St Petersburg.
The highlight of our stay in Grand Rivers was a visit to
Patti’s Restaurant. It was like a little village of not only the restaurant but
a Moonshine tasting shop ( yes we bought a bottle of blackberry flavored moonshine),
several shops and miniature golf . Our
group of 3 couples enjoyed 2 inch thick pork chops, (their specialty), bread backed in flower
pots and of course luscious desserts.
The next day we headed to Paris Landing, TN. It was our
first stop on the Tennessee River. It is a beautiful state park that not only
had a nice marina but also campgrounds and a large lodge that had hotel rooms
and a restaurant where we enjoyed a nice dinner.
On October 8th we headed to Birdsong Resort and Marina. They advertised a beautiful setting and Pearl Museum that promised to be a Looper’s favorite stop. Well, it was tucked a away on a very narrow, twisted “river” off the Tennessee River. If you didn’t follow the course defined by the markers you could find yourself grounded in just a few inches of water. Our little flotilla made it through to the marina safely but another boat after us decided to take a short cut and ended up grounded in 8 inches of water. Sea Tow came to the rescue! When we arrived at the Marina it was a dump. We were instructed to tie up to the dock parallel to a large, rusted, sunken tourist boat the has been there for 12 + years. Undeterred by first impressions, we went to the Pearl Museum. It consisted of one large room. One small counter was dedicated to showing us how freshwater pearls are cultivated in the area. The rest of the shop displayed pearl jewelry for sale that was not made from their pearls.
We did top the day off with a great docktail party!
We had scheduled 2 days there so the next day we took advantage of a
free courtesy car and went shopping at Walmart.
Our next four stops were at Clifton Marina, Grand Harbor Marina (which put us on the Ten-Tom waterway), Midway Marina in Fulton, MS, and Columbus Marina also in MS.
Dinner at Harvy's in Columbus:
On October 16th we had our first
anchorage since Jack installed our new Windless that operates the anchor. Cook’s
Bend Cutoff anchorage was a beautiful, quiet spot with more than enough room
for our four boats.
Along the river we passed Superman's changing room
Yesterday, 10/17 we got a later start because of fog but we
made our way to the Tombigbee River and we are now at Kingfisher Bay Marina in
Demopolis, AL. We had a nice dinner at
the Red Barn Restaurant and today we are focusing on chores.
We have had clear skies and calm water but the temperature
has been dropping over the past few days. Temperatures have been in the low
forties in the morning warming up to only the low 60’s.
Since October 5th, we have gone through 11 locks
and have traveled through 4 states.
That makes a total of 103 locks since we started the Loop
and 17 states and 2 countries on our journey so far!
Our Great Loop Journey as of October 18th, 2024!!
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