Adventures of Harbour Reach in the Fall of 2008

The last two months have been somewhat repetitious since we traveled many of the same places we have previously written about. We’ll concentrate on things and places we may have missed before, and hope it is still interesting.

After leaving the Bay Springs area of the Tenn-Tom Waterway, we traveled back to the Tennessee River. On our first night we found a small anchorage in Yellow Creek with a waterfall in it and with a stretch of clean white sand at its entrance.

Local boaters told us that this is the anchorage that Darryl Worley, a famous country writer and singer, wrote the following song, only the first half is quoted:  

                            Tennessee River Run

                 “Worked all week, got it all done  
                  Let's make a Tennessee River run.

                 Hey everybody, I think the time is right

                 Let's get together down where the catfish bite
                 Cooped up all winter waitin' on a day like this
                 It's the way I feel when I'm rockin' on the waterr
                 Baby that I can't resist

                BBQ grill, summertime jam
               Just a mile above the Pickwick dam
               Party on the water, whole lotta fun
               Time to make a Tennessee River run

                I'll get my bass boat, crank up your party barge
               We'll drop these anchors out where the big boats are
               Break out a cooler, pass out some ice cold beer
               Look at all the people out here on the water
               Man I can't believe we're here

               Swingin' on a rope, gonna have a ball
               Jumpin' off the Yellow Creek waterfall
               Checking out the honeys baking in the sun
               God bless a Tennessee River run

                Doo-doo-n-dee-dee
X             Oh what a weekend, we've had some time to play
                I should be leavin' tomorrow's a work week day
                I just might call in, tell 'em that I can't get home.”

 We stayed there in the middle of the week and didn’t see the “Party on Water”, but we did see several boats come up to the waterfall to let people off to swing from the rope and to ride down the rocky waterfall. About five weekends later we passed by on our return trip and saw several boats pulled up on shore with picnicking supplies in full view. It is definitely a place where “local knowledge” helps for planning your stay!

Helen Keller was born near Florence, AL in a small town called Tuscumbia. Soon after her birth in 1880 she became blind and deaf. Her home is open to the public. We found it both an interesting and thought-provoking place to visit.

Florence has many other interesting sites including a Frank Lloyd Wright designed house, a town owned park with RV and Marina areas as well as many acres of grassy fields with various sporting facilities, and many historical homes. We stayed at the marina and walked downtown.

On our way downtown we passed the highest domiciliary mound in the Tennessee Valley. This Mound was built between 100 B. C. and 400 A. D. Indian mounds are large piles of grass-covered dirt on which was built a chief’s house or a temple. We have seen many mounds in Alabama, but they all are missing the buildings on top. I guess time has taken its toll.

We decided not to visit the “Coon dog cemetery” and W. C. Handy’s home and museum. We’ll save those until our next visit to Florence, Alabama.

By the middle of September we realized that we would have time for a quick flight to Amsterdam to visit our daughter, Becky, and her family

before we would attend the America’s Great Loop Cruising Association rendezvous at Wheeler State Park. Boat cleanup and maintenance were quickly done before our flight. We had a marvelous time visiting, playing, and sightseeing. Becky and her husband, Mike, have a four-and-a-half year old son,

Finn, who loves to climb,

and a two-year-old daughter, Stella, who loves being with others.

We love being with them.

We gained many interesting ideas at the rendezvous and met many new cruisers.

There were about 180 members and 63 boats at the rendezvous. Some members came by car as many are still in the planning stage. Just about every night since the rendezvous we have stopped where other members have stopped. It is fun visiting with new friends and comparing our experiences. Most people do the Loop trip in about 11 months; we have the longest record so far. It is our ninth year and we are only about two-thirds of the way done. We’ve traveled about 18,000 miles with all of our side trips and doing just the loop itself is usually less than 6,000 miles.

Last year we showed pictures of the “scary” channel into Aberdeen Marina. In case you don’t remember it, above is a new picture of this channel. The least expensive fuel on the Tenn-Tom last week was in Aberdeen, so we decided to venture in again. This is a picture of Bill in shock after filling the fuel tank for $1050. Luckily prices have gone down considerably since we last filled it in June!

Sally, a lady we had met earlier this summer, said to call her in Aberdeen and she would take us on a drive-by tour of many of the historic houses. We didn’t realize her grandfather and great-uncle had built most of them. Victorian, antebellum, and turn-of-the-century houses are quite big and very impressive. Unfortunately she didn't have time to stop for our photo-taking, so you won't be able to see any of them. We love New England architecture, but certainly enjoy looking at historic “mansions” of any area.

Most mornings are foggy until after 7:30 am and we have had to use radar several times to get an early start in order to make it to the next marina or anchorage before sunset. One foggy morning we left Aberdeen a little after 7:30 and managed to get through the “scary” channel.

Looking at this picture, just imagine trying to distinguish between standing trees and channel

markers.

These next pictures are of the fog near sunrise in our anchorage and then later in the first lock of the day.

Since we will be going into saltwater for the next few months, we decided to paint the bottom of the boat. It rained the first two times we planned on having the boat hauled. There are only two marinas we know of which will allow the owners to do their own bottom painting. During the rain we had gone past the first one and then last week we got to the other one. Luckily the sun was shining when we arrived, so we had it hauled and left in a stand so we could paint it. In case you haven’t seen the details of getting a boat prepared for painting, we took some pictures. This is the Demopolis Yacht Basin where we had it hauled. It is also the biggest towboat fuel dock on all the southern rivers we have been traveling.

This picture shows three towboats at the fuel dock. Tows leave their barges at a mooring cell a few miles away when they go for fuel. Bill had to bring our boat between the inside of the fuel dock and the dock with a restaurant at the end. Very narrow and only part of it is deep enough for our boat.

This is our “just out of the water boat” , with its dirty bottom.
This is it after it has all been pressure washed except for the last spot of “dirt”.

Now the cleaning is done and we can get started repainting it.

After getting it back in the water we enjoyed the start of fall foliage

and the sight of “year round beach play areas”, for young and old alike.

We’ve always heard that New Jersey has the biggest mosquitoes, but Alabama must have the largest bugs.

If any of you know what this is, please let us know.

We wish you all a happy Thanksgiving and we hope to see some of you when we return to Rhode Island for Christmas.

Moving Along the Western Tennessee River

It is already Labor Day and time seems to be flying by. In our last blog we left you in suspense wondering what is a “Duck Parade” and what was “the men’s reaction” to visiting Graceland, Elvis Presley’s home. We’re sorry for the delay, but life on the river has been eventful.

A Duck Parade is just what it sounds like, a group of ducks parading after the Duck Master. The Peabody Hotel in Memphis, TN is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is famous for it’s seventy-five year old tradition of maintaining a duck pond in its lobby. It was originally started as a prank by a group of young hunters who thought it quite funny to put wild ducks in the exclusive hotel’s pond. After the hotel owners saw how much interest it generated, they started the now famous tradition. The ducks live on the roof in a small “castle” and every morning at 11 am five ducks catch the elevator down to the lobby and they march on a red rug behind their human Duck Master to the fountain and pond. At 5 pm they reverse their path and return to their castle on the roof. While they are “away from home” there is a sign by their door saying “Gone to Work”. Thank you to our Nashville friends who alerted us to this interesting parade! Bill and our friend Harvey originally snickered when Diane and I requested a car trip to Memphis. They humored us and agreed to go to Graceland so we women could relive our childhood dreams of Elvis Presley. The visit to Graceland was enjoyable. His home was amazing with some of its very expensive “wacky furnishings”, but the best part was to hear many of his famous songs and to see many of his elaborate costumes. The guys admitted that they enjoyed visiting his home nearly as much as we did.

The evening was fantastic. We walked along Beale Street that is known for its many Blues music venues and restaurants. We made a lucky choice by stopping at BB King’s restaurant, which had a live band playing excellent Blues music. By 11 pm we were tired, the music was over,and we went back to the hotel. The next morning we visited Mudd Island on the Mississippi River. It has a hydrological (or water flow) scale model of the southern Mississippi River that is at least a mile long. It is amazing to see the depth and width changes that occur along the river as well as the size and location of all the major cities. The cities major street names are displayed and the city limits are properly proportioned and displayed in bronze. What a work of art! From here we drove back to the boat, only 150 miles away. We enjoyed the Minsky’s company for one more day before they had to drive to Kentucky to see their newborn granddaughter, Amber.
An osprey hitch-hiking near the flag on a barge loaded with wood chips

Bill and I left the Tenn-Tom, and moved on to the Tennessee River to join two other couples we had met in Alabama in the fall of 2006. They both keep their boats on or near the Tennessee River and were planning to get together for a week. They invited us to join them. We spent one week, swimming,

talking, eating potluck dinners (or pitch ins as they are referred to here), and cruising short distances each day, so we could spend more time together. By Saturday both sets of friends had to take their boats back to their marinas and head home. Bill and I decided to continue on to the start of the Tennessee River and to stop at a few places we had not visited before. We stopped at twelve new anchorages and two new marinas. It was just enough to reinforce our original thoughts that the Tennessee River is one of the best rivers for boating in the United States. There is a large plot of land between the Tennessee River and the Cumberland River that is a national recreation area called the Land Between the Lakes. There are no houses on the rivers in this area and there are lots of camping areas both on and off the rivers. Many of the anchoring areas are near one of the camping sites and there are usually long roads or trails for walking. We met several camping families and were happy to see parents as well as their children enjoying life in a tent. Land Between the Lakes has many other attractions that people with cars can enjoy.
The anchorages all had beautiful scenery, calm waters, and many wonderful sounds, colors, and smells of nature. Flowers, trees, and birds were abundant. Graffiti Cove even had man-made displays of flags on its rocks. Most of this was tastefully done. About the only complaint we had of the area dealt with fish attractors. The idea of a fish attractor is great – a combination of wire, brush, etc. placed in the water to attract fish for protection, from fishermen and other predators. These attractors were usually marked on the local map or chart used by fishermen of the area. We used these maps to get better detail of the many inlets and creeks. Once our anchor pulled up a fish attractor consisting of two big cement blocks, many tree branches, and many pieces of wire holding everything together. Unfortunately that mass combined with our anchor, anchor line, and float line created a Chinese puzzle which took Bill and I two and a half hours to master. I was in the water and Bill was on the boat with a collection of lines tied to different parts of the puzzle. I wonder how the people marking the maps missed that obstacle!
Animals always “catch our eye”. The goats and deer on these pictures are obviously enjoying their life on Swallow Bluff Island. They are the only inhabitants of the island and seem to roam around, stopping at least twice a day at the “beach area”. They certainly added interest when we anchored nearby for the night.

The Tennessee River has the only cultured pearl farm in North America. The original owner had investigated about two hundred sites in the US and Canada. He determined that the area only ten miles from his home had the best possibility for growing cultured pearls. The site is in Bird Song, TN and the racks of mollusks with pearl seed implants are kept in the water at the Bird Song Marina. Only a small percentage of the world’s freshwater pearls are produced in Tennessee, but over ninety percent of the other growers implant their mollusks with a seed created from a Tennessee River mussel shell. As we cruised through this area we saw many boats equipped for mussel “catching”. The old method was by “brailing” and the newer method is by diving. We saw one brail boat and many divers’ boats. Brailing is the process of dragging a metal bar with tines over the mussel beds. The boats for brailing have a super structure built up to support the metal bar. The open mussels clamp down on the tines and are later pulled to the surface. Diving to collect mussels is done with a compressor on the boat and the diver mucking around in the dark water with his hands to find and gather the mussels (yuck!!!). The boats always display a diver’s flag when someone is diving.
Shiloh National Battlefield extends along the western portion of the Tennessee River in Shiloh, Tennessee. An important battle in the Civil War was fought here. On the first day the Confederate army made great strides, but on the second and final day the Union forces were victorious. Both armies were fighting to gain control of an important railroad junction in Corinth, MS. The Union won the Shiloh Battle in April 1862 and moved south to capture the valuable railroad junction of Corinth. This second and bitterly contested battle was fought on October 3-4, 1862. Union troops were victorious. There are many important Civil War sites along the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. For any history buff that enjoys boating, cruising these two rivers would be a dream come true.

After enjoying these first two weeks in August, Bill and I became car bound. Bill’s sister, Betty, called us one morning to tell us that Bill’s Mother was in the hospital and was not getting any better. We ”parked the boat”, rented a car, and headed north to Indiana to visit her. Unfortunately she passed away at midnight and we didn’t arrive until 1:00 am. Mother was a wonderful person and we are so lucky that she remained happy and relatively healthy until she turned 98 this year. Betty and her husband Jerry, Bill and I, and our daughter Beth were able to spend a few days together before we headed to western Pennsylvania for Mother’s funeral. While she had spent her last two years in Indiana with Betty and Jerry, most of her life had been spent in Greensburg, PA.

On our return trip we drove on the Natchez Trace National Parkway through much of Tennessee. There are no buildings on it and commercial vehicles are not allowed to travel on it. The roadsides are well maintained and there are lots of tall trees, evergreen and deciduous. We passed many wild turkeys. Unfortunately they were not as excited to see us as we were to see them.

The first week back we stayed at the marina, relaxed, and got to know many of the people staying on our dock. It always amazes us how friendly the local people are and how willing they are to share life stories. That first week we were included in two "All Dock Potlucks" and one afternoon of socializing at anchor. For one of the potlucks, we brought a salad fresh from our garden, tomatoes, basil, mozzarella cheese, and Italian dressing. Our basil is so prolific we give bouquets of it as boat gifts when we go visiting.

The anchorage fun included at least nine other boats with kids, parents, and grandparents. Everyone had some kind of water floating device.

We are now anchored in Bay Springs again waiting for the rains and wind from Gustav to leave. Next week we plan on having the boat hauled so we can paint the bottom. The temperature is now in the 80's, so we feel ready to tackle that job.