Good-Bye Tennessee River

October 24, 2010

After Larry and Donna left us at Goose Pond Marina in Scottsboro (a favorite marina), we traveled on to Ditto Landing Marina in Huntsville, AL.  This municipal marina has brand new docks, clean bathrooms and showers, washer and drier, a beautiful flat bike path that ends at a Publix grocery store, a campground for Buddy to sniff and romp and it only costs $.50 a foot per night-we stayed a week since we also took advantage of the Enterprise car rental weekend rate of 32.36 from Friday at 12 noon to Monday at 12 noon and got to actually drive to places we wanted to see.  There's U.S. Space & Rocket Center where we spent time exploring the hands-on exhibits, flight simulators, IMAX theater, the 354-foot Saturn V moon rocket, full size model of the Space Shuttle  and the Hubble Space Telescope and a U.S. Air Force SR-71 Blackbird spy plane.

Saturn V Rocket

Spy plane

Huntsville is known as the Rocket City because of the aerospace industry, led by the German (he surrendered to the Americans at the end of WWII) Dr. Wernher von Braun.  He and his team were instrumental in the USA's successful rocket program.  The city also is home to the Army's  Redstone Arsenal from which we could hear loud booming testing of some kind of rockets going off-Buddy loved it -NOT!

So between the NASA program and the government presence in Redstone Arsenal, the government money has kept this area in a stable condition.  We found it to be upscale, interesting  and comfortable.  Hmm, we'll keep this place in mind for a possible relocation destination (low taxes too!)

Anyway, the ducks at this Ditto Landing Marina kept us laughing at their quacking at  us. They would swim around the marina and announce themselves to whomever would listen and dare feed them. Different kinds seemed to get along and swim together all day...wonder what their secret is....

Duck diversity

Cliffs outside of Huntsville

Shrimp boil at Joe Wheeler State Park-no, it's not an AARP meeting, but it looks like one!

They'll let anyone in!!!

 Every fall the AGLCA holds a rendezvous at Joe Wheeler Sate Park in Rogersville, AL for interested Loopers.  They hold workshops to learn about the next leg of the Loop, dinners where you'd  meet other Loopers and cocktail hours to party with the Loopers you've met along the way and new Loopers you've just met.  By the time we had decided to sign up for the rendezvous, it was sold out but we decided to go to the marina and catch up with some of the great folks we've met along the way.  What a great time we had with the people there...a gathering every night and a special shrimp boil (feast!) sponsored by a gold looper who contributes the shrimp every year while every one brings some food dish.  How nice is that!

Gloria & Jim(Crawdad) Laura and Bill(Monkey Girl)Ana minus Pete(Blue Yonder)

      Wilson Lock-93' high

Looking up the 90' lock wall

 We left Joe Wheeler with our traveling buddies Art and Sandra (Magoo) to beat the mad rush of boaters traveling up to Grand Harbor where the Tennessee meets Yellow Creek and begins the Tenn-Tom Waterway.  We needed to go through two locks which can be troublesome if a tow is involved.  Usually we had been lucky but this trip reminded us that our luck can run out and it did in, of all locks, Wilson Lock.  We had to wait two hours until a tow locked through before we could lock through.  This lock is over 90 feet and is very intimidating when looking straight up from the bottom to the top.

We have spent over a month on the Tennessee River and were now leaving it.  This river is beautiful and gave us many glorious days and peaceful evenings.  The weather has been as perfect as we could want it, the scenery as exciting as one could imagine and the people as delightful as one would hope for.   This was more than we expected...we will miss this Tennessee River...