Mobile to Fort Myers

The day after Thanksgiving the winds kicked up, so we stayed put in Mobile to spend more time with our new looper friends. For lunch we all went to a popular local diner, The Dew Drop Inn, to experience its great greasy food. One national food critic named it one of the four best spots in the U.S. for onion rings. The rings were good, indeed! The following day we left with Janice and Eddie across Mobile Bay.














Passing the historic Middle Channel Light, we headed across the big water bay to Pensacola on the eastern part of the Gulf Intercoastal Waterway (GIWW). We traveled three days with our friends, the first two nights rafting our boats together on the hook. One night we experienced a gorgeous sunset, and the next night we enjoyed the lights of the nearby Choctawhatchee Bridge.

In this part of Florida, the GIWW has lots of different looks, as you cruise sometimes by the dunes of barrier islands, sometimes down man made canals, and sometimes through impenetrable swamps.

 

When we arrived in Panama City, Perfect Timing was on its own. We reprovisioned there and prepared our boat for an approaching storm which hit the next day with winds as high as 60 miles per hour. After four days at the city marina, we left for Apalachicola with its working shrimp and oysterboat fleet.

For two days we ate ourselves silly with fresh oysters, shrimp, and scallops. We seriously studied weather forecasts while there, knowing we next had to cross a 180 mile expanse of open Gulf.

We left with another boat for Dog Island, a small island nine miles off Carabelle, Florida. We anchored there to get a quick start at first light. Though we and our buddy boat friends, Jeff and Lynda, were apprehensive about the crossing, we picked our window well. We saw 2-4 footers on the beam for the first five hours--enough to get our cat, Schatze, sick--before the seas calmed down to 1-3's for the remaining 3 1/2 hours to Clearwater.

 Though tired from the crossing, we left the next morning for Venice which had an easy entrance to a marina with great views of the channel as well as of the beautiful homes downriver. We left at 10:00 AM in heavy fog for a slow cruise toward Ft. Myers. When the fog lifted at noon, we picked up our pace and arrived, exhausted, at Salty Sam's marina, where the boat will remain for five weeks. In a few days we will leave for a two week respite at home over Christmas.

The Tenn-Tom

Before beginning the next part of our trip, we stayed at a marina where the Tennessee meets the Tenn-Tom Waterway. With a courtesy car we visited Shiloh National Park, a Civil War battleground, and that night with ten other loopers enjoyed dinner at a local landmark, the Catfish Hotel. The next day we set off on the Tenn-Tom. This waterway is a 253 mile stretch constructed between 1972 and 1985, connecting the Tennessee River with the Tombigbee River at Demopolis, Alabama. Though relatively unknown to most of us, this project is the largest public works project ever undertaken by the Army Corps of Engineers. Ten new locks were constructed, and rivers were straightened. Fifty percent more earth was moved in this endeavor than was moved in the construction of the Panama Canal. From Demopolis, the Tombigbee continues to Mobile, Alabama for a total distance from the Tennessee of 451 river miles.

We spent nine days traveling to Mobile, interrupting our trip at Columbus, Mississippi to go back home for two weeks to work and catch up with family and friends. On the river we saw several bald eagles, experienced fast and high water (courtesy of tropical storm, Ida), enjoyed funky marinas, were wowed by chalk cliffs and secluded anchorages, and traversed thirteen locks. We often found ourselves traveling in virtual circles because of all the switchbacks in the river, and we were surprised at how much wilderness there is in the middle of our country. At the lower part of the system, in fact, we saw little evidence of human activity--and certainly no marinas--for 230 miles. We did see, however, a number of somewhat scary hunting/fishing cabins set along the river banks.
















































































































Loopers often say that one of the best parts of the loop experience is the people you meet. We are finding this to be true. Entering the Columbus Lock to resume our trip, we found two other looper couples locking down with us. After traveling together for a day, Jim and Pam on "Silver Boots" and Eddie and Janice on "Eagles Nest" invited us to raft up with them at an anchorage that night. We enjoyed each other's company and continued on together 350 miles to Mobile, anchoring out five times, four of those rafted together. To top it off, Jim's mom, Marian, who lives in Mobile, invited us to supper and then to a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner, home-cooked, southern style. More gracious folks you couldn't find. A photo attached to this blog shows the seven of us with our looper burgees. Dave and Linda's is white, indicating a loop in progress, Eddie and Janice' is gold, indicating a loop completed, and Jim and Pam's is platinum, indicating more than one loop completed.