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.