Can I go Home?

Today I stood on the foredeck when we entered Pickwick lake. The water was as gray as the sky over us.... wind making a rolling sea below us.  My feet were firmly planted as I rose up with each small lift our good ship made and down again with her.  The wind felt so good blowing in my face..... I wrapped my sweater tighter around me and wondered, can I go home again?  Was I meant to be a sailor?..... a sun shy girl like me???

Hardly a girl at 72, however, if the sun ages one fast then I think the vigor of the water makes you feel alive & young.

Leaving early this morning we were cruising on a lonely quiet river. This is the Bible belt and I suppose the good folks were in church and the not so good were still in bed????  Or were they out cruising around 1/3 of this Great Land?

I thought this was the cutest house high above the river.

Biggest tow today... this one pushing 18 barges!

and here's another with not so many but fully loaded oil barges....we could tell they were loaded as they were sitting very low in the water.

We passed a section of the bank of the TN River that must have had very high water recently... we saw many land slide areas and this house had dirt slide out from under the slab it was sitting on.....

We had one lock to go through today and after seeing so many barges today we thought there would surely be some wait before we could lock up river.  The Captain called the lock and there was no wait time! We did have to speed up the last 10 min. to get there before he shut the gates as another boat had already gone into the lock.  I was left piloting the boat at a higher speed than I have ever done while Walter put down the fenders...egad!  But he was back in time to guide Miss gg into this lock.  Here we are heading for the lock.

Other boat already in lock.

In the lock and water filling from underneath making eddies and swirls so we hold tight to the line around the floating bollard.

To give you an idea of how big these locks are, here is the other boat ….... a 50 ft home made welded steel boat.

I had no trouble finding this Bright yellow floating Bollard!

Here Walter is holding the stern of Miss gg off the lock wall... the fender put there to do this job is falling into big square cut outs or recessed bollards for the barges.

After rising 52 feet the lock gate is opened and we are moving out.

Pickwick Lake

We are just off the lake at Grand Harbor marina.  We only had a little rain while cruising today.  After we brought back a pizza from town (free loaner car!) and were snuggled in here at the dock the rain came.  Weather looks good tomorrow.  We will continue going UP the TN river.