Saturday Oct. 12 – Thursday Oct 17 

0 miles 

Our stay at Joe Wheeler State Park, Rogersville AL was awesome. This park contains a lodge w/restaurant, hotel rooms, cabins, cottages, camp sites, marina, golf course, tennis courts, hiking trails, and mountain biking trails. This park is a short distance off the Tennessee River on First Creek. The land surrounding the creek is all part of the park and offers a pristine nature backdrop.

 

Looking at the marina from the lodge.

 

 Priorities in the middle.

 

This rendezvous is a collection of boaters that have already finished the Loop, those (like us) in the process of doing the Loop, and the wannabes or those planning to do the Loop some day. We have spent the week sitting in on mini seminars with talks on the waterways from here to Norfolk VA. Places to see and stay along the way and things to do and not to do, or be aware of along the way. On Tuesday and Thursday afternoon for a couple of hours they had what was called a “Looper Crawl”.  Any of the Loopers that came by boat could open their boat for any of the attendees to come aboard and get a tour. It’s a fun way to see a lot of different style boats and a great way for those that don’t yet have a boat to get some ideas on what kind of boat they might want to buy. Wednesday we had a line tossing contest and on Thursday a dinghy race. Now this was no ordinary race. You had one person to steer and one to navigate. The person steering was blindfolded and the navigator had to tell them which way to turn while they were going in reverse. The fastest dinghy to make a loop around a fixed buoy and get back to the dock was the winner. Needless to say there were plenty of laughs.

 

On Wednesday the town of Rogersville had a bus come pick us up and take us into town for any shopping needs then took us to a nearby Bed & Breakfast for a concert.

My favorite part of this week was meeting all the people and making some new friends. There were even 2 other couples from Holland MI that attended.

  

Friday Oct. 18 

54 miles     Joe Wheeler to Bear Creek, MS mm#225

We left Joe Wheeler Resort at 0900 just as the fog was lifting. There was quite the flotilla leaving at the same time so we divided up into 3 groups to fit in the 2 locks that were down river. 

 

The first lock was Wheeler Lock and brought us down 52 feet. We had 10 boats during the time we were locking. Several had to raft off each other to fit inside.

 

 

 Getting ready to leave the lock.

 

The next lock was Wilson lock which was only 17 miles away. Since the locks were so close to each other the lock masters waited for all the boats so we all cruised about the same speed to reach the 2^nd lock. The Wilson lock (we dropped 93 feet) is the oldest on the Tennessee River and is named after Woodrow Wilson (the 28^th president). The dam is architecturally intriguing. The arches forming the spillways are patterned after construction skills dating back to the Roman Empire.



 

 

 Inside the lock looking forward after going down.

 

 Looking back in the lock.

 

Farther downstream we passed this concrete structure which is the only visible evidence of the old Riverton lock, part of what once was a canal and lock system built more than 100 years ago. A canal extended upstream for a bout 5 miles so boats could bypass rapids and shoals. It was covered by water when the Pickwick Dam was built.

 

 

We pulled off the Tennessee River into Bear Creek to an anchorage at 1630. We are sharing this anchorage with one other boat called Meridian (Terry and Donna Hoy)

 

 

Saturday Oct. 19 

13 miles    Bear Creek, MS mm#225 to Grand Harbor Marina

As we were leaving our anchorage at 0830 we noticed on the charts that we had spent the night in Mississippi. This section of the Tennessee River intersects 3 states. (Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi) It was now time to say goodbye to the Tennessee River. Our destination for today is Grand Harbor marina which is on Yellow Creek River.

 

 This paddleboat is at the marina and is now used as a personal live aboard boat.

 

We arrived there at 1000. After we got settled in we borrowed a courtesy van the marina provides and headed for the nearest Lowes and Wall Mart for some supplies. The road we took crossed over the Pickwick Lock and Dam which is one we had gone through with the boat a couple of weeks ago. It sure looks a lot different going over it verses going in it.