Demopolis

We are currently in the Demopolis Yacht Basin in Demopolis, AL. This is the last real marina we will see until we reach Mobile.

We hope to leave early in the AM and anchor at a place called Chickasaw Bogue. Wednesday will find us at anchor at Bashi Creek. 0n Thursday we hope to be able to get into a very basic, rustic marina called Bobbys Fish Camp. Friday will be another anchorage at Three Rivers Lake, Saturday at David Lake, and Sunday the Dog River Marina in Mobile. We will probably stay an extra day at Dog River, and Pensacola would be only a day away!

Weather, mechanical problems, and crowding of the marinas and anchorages could delay us along the way, but we are definitely on the home stretch. We are really looking forward to being back home!

Fulton, MS

Wow, we are finally able to access the blogger program!

We did travel upriver to Ft. Donelson, and we are very glad we did. The Cumberland River here is perhaps the prettiest river we had seen up to that point.

Here we are leaving Lake Barkley State Park.

We immediately encounter many more white pelicans.

And then even more!

The scenery soon turns from a lake into a river,

With rocky banks,

And the remains of the inundated forests below on our sonar.

This is our first view of Ft. Donelson, the same view that greeted General Grant when he came around the bend with his gunboats.

This is the Dover Hotel where General Grant received the surrender of 13,000 Confederate troops, the largest such surrender of the Civil War. The surrendering officer, a classmate of Grant's at West Point, asked what the terms of the surrender would be. Grant's answer: "Unconditional surrender," thus creating the story that his initials stood for; "Unconditional Surrender."

We turned around and entered Hickman Creek and spent a wonderful night anchored there while we watched groups of deer coming down to the shore to browse on the young grass and drink from the river. In all we saw a dozen deer.

This is "The Castle on The Cumberland," Kentucky's only maximum security prison. More than 160 inmates have been executed in the electric chair here.

Here is a view of our chart plotter showing us leaving Lake Barkley and entering the canal connecting Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake.

This is one of the clam boats which ply their trade on the Tennessee River. They drag what are called "brailles," which are arrangements of chains with soft hooks with little balls on their points across the clam beds. The clams grab the hooks and are hauled to he surface.

The fresh water clams have been eaten by indigious peoples for millenia. In more recent years they were highly prized for their shells which were turned into buttons until they were replaced by plastic. The shells, however, are still highly prized by the Japanese as the finest material used to "seed" oysters in the manufacture of cultured pearls.

This is the view cruising through the Barkley Canal.

Upon arriving at Kentucky Dam State Park Marina, we borrowed the courtesy car and made our usual pilgrammage to the Elk and Bison Prarie in the Land Between the Lakes.

This Bull Elk was kind of hanging around a large harem of cows being guarded by a very large bull that chased off all such yung bucks. We later heard him "bugling," a very impressive show.

We next encountered a large herd of bison, and got to take lots of pictures, because they blocked the road for some time.

This one was having a great time taking a dust bath.

0n Friday, 0ctober 19, we set out on a leisurely cruise up the Tennessee River [south], headed for Bay Springs Lake, formed by the first dam 0n the Tennessee Tombigbee waterway. This is a place we may use to wait out hurricane season in years to come.

The scenery on the Tennessee was really beautiful, but we were really interested to see Bay Springs Lake.

0n the way we encountered an old friend, the Delta Queen. She looks great coming and going.

When we got to Bay Springs Lake, we were not disappointed in the many delightful anchorages available to us. It is really a beautiful place, is within a days drive of Pensacola and has numerous campgrounds. A great hurricane retreat. Perhaps our most delightful encounter was when a flock of wild turkeys filed out of the woods and browsed on the lake shore for about a half hour while we followed them with binoculars.

Yep, we will definitely return to Bay Springs Lake.

We are currently tucked away at Midway Marina near Fulton, MS. A mass of warm air from the Gulf visited us with rain showers yesterday and a cold front came through today, so we will set out tomorrow. We will be stopping at places like Aberdeen, Colombus, Demopolis and various anchorages where we can find no marina. We won't be far from the Alabama-Mississippi border all the way to Mobile. 0ur goal is to be back in Pensacola by the 10th, but that is subject to the vagaries of the weather and other unplanned circumstances. We are really looking forward to our homecoming.

Cadiz, Kentucky

Sorry we have been so remiss lately.

We spent several days in Green Turtle Bay, then decided we wanted to see more of the Cumberland, and set out on the 28th.

We thought we would spend one night at Lake Barkley State Park Marina, but have been here a week. We got the dinghy motor running reliably, and have been visiting the Park Lodge on a regular basis in the dinghy, fun. The first night we were entertained by a very good Elvis impersonater.

We have had some excitement while we were here. The gentleman travelling with us that is a commercial fisherman got his ear pierced! He received a spinning rod and reel for his 60th birthday and decided to try his had fishing for large mouth bass, and prceeded to hook his right earlobe.

Luckily the other man we are travelling with is a Doctor and has his instruments with him.

While Jim grimaced, Bob shoved the hook all the way through.....

...and Elizabeth, Bob's wife, and Nuclear Medical Technician, snipped off the barb.

The reason we have stayed so long is that the weather is so good and the fact that we are in a covered slip gives us a perfect opportunity to refinish the hand rails.

Here's Gail doing the hard part.

This Cumberland River we are on is not only beautiful, but is rife with history.

In about 1699 a party of settlers, bound for Nashville set out down the Tennessee River on flatboats. Among them were Colonel John Donelson and his young daughter, Rachael. This harrowing journey included nearly wrecking on Mussel Shoals, where a Tennessee town of that name now lies, being caught in a whirlpool called "The Suck," and being harrassed and fired upon by hostile indians. As it turned out, the party on one of the flatboats found they were infected with smallpox, and held back to distance them from the rest of the party. Unfortunately the indians were able to overtake them and their screams from the torture by the savages haunted the rest of the group. It was little consolation to know that the entire tribe would likely be wiped out by the disease of their victims.

When they reached the mouth of the Tennessee, where it empties into the 0hio, at a place we passed a few days ago, they turned right and proceeded upstream on the 0hio! Flatboats are wooden barges that were designed to go downstream only. They are huge cumbersome vessels. When river men took their cargoes down to New 0rleans, they broke them up and sold them for lumber. It was unheard of to try to propel them upstream, but they did, by poling, and dragging them with huge ropes called cordelles, they travelled up the 0hio, then turned right once again and up the Cumberland, right past where we are now, to Naslhville.

It is interesting to note that the young Rachael Donelson went on to become our seventh First Lady, wife of Andrew Jackson. She is said to have carried some of her frontier ways to the White House, and was often seen smoking a corn cob pipe.

This morning we plan to venture upstream to the little town of Dover, TN where the battle of Ft. Donelson took place. The victories there and at Ft. Henry, nearby on the Tennessere River were the first major Union victories in the Civil War, and catapulted Ulysses S. Grant to national prominence. It is said that when Lincoln was exulting over Grant's victories, Grants's detractors told him that Grant drank a great deal of whiskey. "Find out what brand he drinks and send a case to all my Generals..." he said, "...that man fights."

We will anchor in Hickman Creek which was right in the midst of the hail of rife balls during the battle. We have checked with the Barkley Lock and the Lake is a little over 3 feet below "normal pool". The entrance to Hickman Creek is said to be 7 feet at normal pool. We draw 4 feet. Hmmmm... we shall see.

More about Ft. Donelson later.

We recently learned that Gail Thomas reads the blog to Aunt Eloise. So, hey, Aunt Eloise and thank you, Gail. We love and miss you both!!!!!