It was 37° when we got up this morning in Florence. That’s in American degrees—not Canadian degrees—so dang cold. The boys lobbied for the opportunity to relieve themselves in the bathtub, before reluctantly using the great outdoors. (As Jeff Goldblum correctly observed in The Big Chill, “The best thing about nature is that it’s one giant urinal.”)
We put Florence Harbor behind us at the quite reasonable hour of 9.
Magic Jeanne, Time to Breathe, and Plan B all headed to Aqua Yacht Harbor with us pulling up the rear.
An absolutely gorgeous day for cruising, particularly from the comfort of the englassed pilothouse.
This time past it, we photographed the Natchez Trace Bridge.
The Natchez Trace was an old Native American trail across parts of the South. Who knew Native Americans knew how to build a beam bridge, much less work with concrete and steel. Meriwether Lewis—who has appeared in prior blog posts—was murdered while traveling the Trace. Just like Alabama folks murdered our poor drone and honest football recruiting. Bunch of serial killers it turns out, but then who’s surprised by that?
With no locks to jam us up, we made solid time to the entrance of Yellow Creek.
Yellow Creek is the first piece of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. The Tenn-Tom links the Tennessee River to the Tombigbee River, which will dump us out into Mobile Bay.
For anyone not following this so far, we were traveling west on the Tennessee and made a left as shown in the photo. That put us on the red dotted line at Iuka, Mississippi. Mississippi is our 13th state. For anyone who HAS followed this so far AND correctly answered yesterday’s quiz question, it will be easy to calculate that we now have visited more than a quarter of them. It’s 14 out of 51 major political subdivisions if you add in D.C., which we do only because that’s where we started.
By the time we reached our marina and docked in our assigned jail cell, the temperature had climbed to at least 38°. The boys looked longingly at the tub one more time before dutifully braving the cold. Meanwhile it’s warm in Mobile, just 450 miles due south.
Despite the cold, this was our knd of day. Thirty-eight nautical miles, no locks, 4 1/2 hours. The restaurant—rumored to be closed for the season—in fact is up and running. We met some new-to-us Loopers and reconnected with some good people we’ve met before. Always a good time.
Aqua Yacht Harbor has most excellent WiFi, so we’ll probably see what Harry Bosch is up to and then hit the pillows early. The hope is to pull out at dawn for a long run down to Fulton. The temperatures might drop below freezing tonight. If anyone knows how to keep the fog off the river, please let us know ASAP.