Going North on the Tenn-Tom

When we last wrote we had just arrived in Demopolis, AL. Demopolis is at the junction of the Tenn-Tom Waterway and the Black Warrior River. From this point the lower Tenn-Tom/Black Warrior leads to Mobile, Alabama and the Gulf of Mexico, only 213 miles away. The upper Tenn-Tom connects with the Tennessee River 237 miles north of Demopolis. For the remaining part of this summer we plan to go north to the Tennessee River and then do a slow cruise along the Tennessee River, visiting places we missed before and re-visiting some of our favorite places.

A dam and a lock are located at Demopolis on the waterway. The above picture shows the lock on the right and the dam on the left. Part of the water flows over the dam and down over the rocks in the river. A lock is necessary here to prevent boats from having to travel over the rapid flowing water shown on the left. The lock on the right side lowers the water level 40 feet so boats can descend or ascend these 40 feet in one ”locking experience”, similar to an elevator bypassing stairs which make the change of elevation “rough on a person”.

In Demopolis we met some people who will be doing the loop in a few years. (We’re not the only adventuresome boaters.) These people had just come up to Demopolis from Florida and mentioned that they had seen wild boar on the way up. We had never seen any, but vowed to keep a look out. Imagine our surprise when we saw some along the bank just a few days later.

There was much to see and do along the Tenn-Tom. The scenery was so different from our trip south on this waterway in December of 2006 when the leaves had fallen and the weather was very cold and foggy. Now the weather is hot, hotter, and even hotter yet, highs in mid and upper nineties daily for 2 ½ months and very humid, the skies are blue, usually no clouds, and the trees and other plants are in their glory. Here are some observations of things we saw along the way.

True hunter’s homes appear different from non-hunters homes - Some of those “things” on the side may be boar tusks, but most look like deer antlers. The hunter’s house is built on “stilts” to prevent flooding when the river rises.

Foundations for stilt houses are very different from houses with basements. This is the foundation for a fancy river home.

Cell phones are essential along the river. Regular phone booths are nearly impossible to reach, even if they are present.

Anchorages and marinas sometimes appeared to be impossible to reach, but after a few scary narrow channels through tree stumps and trees, we adapted to life on the waterways.

The saying on my new tee shirt expresses our retirement sentiments. Advice from a River: “Go with the flow. Immerse yourself in nature. Slow down and meander. Go around the obstacles. Be thoughtful of those downstream. Stay current. The beauty is in the journey!” Let this be our motto!

Riversides have many different appearances, both natural and man-made. We’ve been intrigued with the different natural compositions, trees, rocks, and different sand or clay colors. These few pictures show some of the Tenn-Tom’s beautiful landscape.

Flowers and birds are plentiful on the riverbanks.

Osprey are native to Kentucky, but by 1950 none were nesting in the state and they were practically extinct because of the wide-spread use of DDT. Government regulations went into effect in 1984 to re-establish the population of nesting birds. By 2002, a survey showed 33 osprey nests and 115 osprey in all of Kentucky . We suspect this number has increased drastically in Kentucky since many of the day markers had nests on them with 3 or 4 babies in sight.

Many boaters complain about the holdups they have at locks because commercial vessels have top priority or that lockmasters purposely hold them up. We’ve been very fortunate when passing through locks this year. In fact one day, I was amazed at how fast the locking went at our first lock, so I timed the locking process at the next 5 locks we passed through that day. ( Six in one day usually isn’t possible.) The timing started after we entered the open gates, attached a line from Harbour Reach to the bollards, and then radioed the lockmaster that we were “secure” and it ended when he blew his whistle letting us know that we could proceed out. This means that he had closed the gate behind us, filled the necessary 30-40 feet of water through the entire lock, and then opened the gate in front of us with the water level inside equal to the water on the other side of the lock. The locking times went from 9 minutes and 15 seconds to nearly 15 minutes. We were also thoroughly drenched in two of them because it poured rain while the lightning and thunderstorms encouraged us to move quickly. The lockmasters were very kind and offered for us to stay in the lock as long as we wanted.

Near the end of the Tenn-Tom is a 7-mile long bay called Bay Springs. It is filled with lots of coves and long inlets where anchoring is a perfect way to spend the night. Friends from Hawaii, Diane and Harvey, met us here for a few days on the Bay and we explored a different anchorage every night. We used the dinghy to tie the boat to a tree if we felt we needed extra holding power. Then we just relaxed - talking, game playing, reading, taking dingy explorations, swimming, and “noodle-ing” (floating on a foam noodle). Bill and I are looking forward to enjoy this Bay again before we leave in the Fall.
Our last adventure before leaving the Tenn-Tom was a car trip to Memphis with Diane and Harvey. Friends in Nashville had told us to be sure to visit Elvis Preseley's home at Graceland, Beale Street, the ducks at Peabody Hotel, and the Mississippi Museum on Mud Island in the Mississippi River. Hopefully you’ll look forward to hearing about these memorable experiences in our next posting.

Cruising the Upper Black Warrior River

Welcome to our “ninth year of cruising” blog. We have previously posted the last two years of our adventures; if you missed them, you’ll find the web addresses in the right-hand column. This year our cruising start was later than anticipated, but it seems we are always overly optimistic about our speed in completing the tasks at hand. On May 19th when we finally returned to the boat in Tuscaloosa, AL we had a list of projects to do before we could start boating. The major project was to put the engine back together. As part of last year’s preventative maintenance, Bill had taken the transmission out and left it with a mechanic and had taken the engine head off and left it with an engine machine shop. No, not a boat yard, since the engine is a Ford Lehman tractor engine we thought an engine shop would be better qualified. The transmission was ready long before we picked it up, but the engine head wasn’t even started by May 19th.

To fill in the two and a half weeks before the engine head was completed, we finished every unfinished or not-yet-started project that has been on our “Boat List” for the last eight years and still had time for sightseeing. Tuscaloosa has many options for tourists. We took the historic building walking tour,

.The highest Indian mound from mid-1800's is believed to be the chieftains

 visited the remarkable Indian mounds in Moundsville, toured the Mercedes manufacturing plant, walked on the University of Alabama’s huge campus and enjoyed many of the mansion-style fraternity and sorority houses. .000000

Cypress Inn Tuscaloosa, AL

 We enjoyed Southern food at many nearby restaurants and at friend’s boat parties. One Saturday a group of “party givers” had a “Crawfish Boil” and cooked 309 pounds of crawfish, as well as potatoes, onions, garlic and chicken. Bill and I had never had crawfish, and were a bit hesitant to try them, but what could we say when two men gave us demonstrations on how they ate them. We closed our eyes, pulled the tails off, sucked the meat out of the tail and were pleasantly surprised at how tasty they were. If any of you have a crawfish boil, don’t forget to invite us!

Our boat is the first on the right under the rightmost boat shed

Sitting on our dock in the marina we could watch fisher-people on the docks and all the boats going by as well as all the ones anchoring for the day or night in the river near us.

House boats and fishing boats are the most common boats on this river. This is a picture of long houseboats rafting together.

Our earth box garden being lifted to the upper deck

Finally on June 13th, the engine was installed and humming, the boat was loaded with our tomatoe and basil garden,and we started singing that old time favorite:

                        "On the water again
                      Just can't wait to get on the water again.

                      The life I love is makin' music with my friends

                      And I can't wait to get on the water again

                      On the water again

                      Goin' places that I've never been

                      Seein' things that I may never see again,

                      And I can't wait to get on the water again."

 

We dropped our dock lines and headed out for a nine-day up-river cruise. We don’t know anybody who has gone to the end of the navigable Black Warrior River and there aren’t any cruise books for that area, so our minds were open for anything on this 200-mile roundtrip. It was a wonderful experience – beautiful scenery and abundant wildlife of flowers, trees, insects and fish. There was a noticeable shortage of people, boats, houses, towns, fuel docks, marinas, and towboats. The people we did see, all asked how we got there from Rhode Island, which obviously took a bit of explaining. One lady even offered to sell us their house in two years when they move if we liked the area. Considering it was on a point and had the longest water frontage in the area, she felt it was a real deal, but we said “No thanks. We’re not planning on moving.”

The first anchorage we stayed at was on a side creek with lots of trees along the riverbanks.

Notice the two butterflies, one at top of  flag and one at bottom

After staying there, I decided Alabama should be called the “Butterfly State”. I have never seen so many butterflies in one place. At one time I counted five on the boat mast, another time 4 were on the anchor platform and frequently one or two fluttered around our heads.

This anchorage was also the start of our friendship with two “fighter bees”. They never tried to sting us, but whenever we were swimming or were walking on the boat one would always be ”in our face”. They had very long noses and reminded us of the SeaBee mascot that used to be near the Quonset, RI gate. It was interesting that they would just fly about 8 inches away while always looking right in our faces. They finally left the boat after about seven days of travel and five different anchorages. We were afraid to take their pictures!

In each anchorage we visited, we swam at least once and took a dinghy ride to explore the rest of the creek. Two of the creeks were around five miles long. We enjoyed going to a remote area on

the creek, turning the engine off, and watching and listening to the birds, frogs, jumping fish, insects and other "not so loveable critters". It was amazing how many non-human sounds could be heard when the engine was shut off. Many nights the local frogs serenaded us with their sounds.

Wild morning glories and mimosa were our favorite flowers. Mimosa trees were plentiful along the riverbanks and their sweet smell helped to “set the mood.”

We traveled to the navigable end of the Mulberry Fork of the upper Black Warrior River. It was marked by this bridge under which we saw many cliff swallows and their nests under the bridge.

When traveling through one of the narrowest river sections of the Sipsey Creek in the dinghy, Bill expressed the feeling that he felt like we were on the African Queen with trees hanging down all around the boat and with lots of floating plants, fallen trees, and dark shadows in the water. It was a “special sensation”.

Just after experiencing our “African Queen” cruise; we tried to pull the anchors up on Harbour Reach, our trawler or “big boat”. Later we had a good laugh since it soon became a drill in “how do you get an anchor up”. We had put two anchors out. The stern anchor got tightly caught in an underwater tree branch, which caused us to move the big boat back on the bow anchor line until it was near the stern anchor line and then we used the bow winch to pull in the stern anchor. Later when we started pulling the bow anchor in, we realized that its line went under a fallen tree in the river and the anchor was set on the non-boat side of the tree. We tried to lift the tree up with a spare line and slip the anchor line out from under it, but the end of the tree broke off way before it should have. After a little more finagling, we realized if we used the trip line to pull up the anchor the rest of the anchor line could be pulled under the tree and into the dinghy. Then all was loaded back onto Harbour Reach. Who ever heard of taking one and a half hours to get your boat unanchored?

After nine enjoyable days of up-river cruising we returned to Eagle Cove Marina and re-provisioned for our “up to the Tennessee River” cruise. While we were at the marina we made plans with a nice couple from Tuscaloosa to have a progressive dinner and boat tour of their new 72 foot PluckeBaum boat and our trawler. They had had work done on their communication satellite the day before and believe it or not the workman had said he would love to cook dinner for them on their boat. So after a tour of their amazing boat, we enjoyed a delicious shrimp pasta dish and homemade French bread. (I hope his satellite work was as good as his cooking!) The four of us then walked towards our boat, picked up another person, and then toured our boat. Our socializing continued as we ate some homemade fudge sundae pie. What fun!

The next morning we left Eagle Cove Marina and headed back down the Upper Black Warrior River. After passing through two locks and traveling 70 miles, we dropped anchor at old lock 8 where we had anchored last year. It’s a very pleasant place to stop, just off the main river with a few houses nearby. The “land neighbors” always stop to ask if we need anything and then they leave their dock lights on in case we do during the night. As we were approaching the anchorage we heard two towboat captains talking to each other. They were within a mile of us. One tow, hauling diesel fuel barges, was going to keep traveling north to Birmingham, and the other, also hauling diesel fuel from the Birmingham area, was going to tie-up on the river’s edge for the night, and then head south to deliver its fuel to Houston, Texas. Bill and I scratched our heads and said it would make more sense to us if the one heading to Texas from Birmingham would just deliver it to Birmingham and the one headed north would leave it someplace in the south. But I guess that isn’t the nature of “free trade”.

The next morning we continued south with our ever-present heron and kingfishers. We enjoy watching them fly along shore. Unfortunately they haven’t figured out that if they land behind us instead of in front of us, they wouldn’t have to keep starting and stopping as we move forward. They usually start their flight just as we catch up to them.

.A natural gas or oil well and pump

That night we anchored early because we wanted to investigate the five and a half mile ox bow just below the Selden Lock that goes back to the dam that is paired with this lock. We chose an anchorage that was in view of the dam and was only ten feet deep. The riverbanks varied from tree lined, to red soil banks to a few houses.

We enjoyed a swim in the rain and then spent a peaceful evening.

In the morning we continued on to Demopolis, AL. There is a small marina there and a huge towboat refueling dock there. We stayed in the marina part and talked to some people there that we had met in the past. We tried to take a tour of Gaineswood, one of the old plantation houses in the area. Unfortunately it was closed but we took a picture to remember it by.

We then went to a local Corps of Engineers riverside park for a picnic lunch and then did some

shopping for more food. In the evening we had dessert with a couple from Florida who hope to start the loop in about four years when he retires. It was another evening of great fun and good company.

We will leave tomorrow to start north up the TennTom Waterway to get to the Tennessee River. With a little bit of luck, the temperatures will fall below the daily high in the nineties and rain will continue to be predicted, but not really start until late afternoon or evening. We really should just be thankful that we haven’t had bad floods like many of the Midwestern states.