Wikipedia is for losers

Midway Marina—our home last night—has no real facilities other than solid docks.  But bless their hearts the owners put in some good WiFi.  That’s quite important, because Bosch is hot on the trail of the Elias assassin and closing in on the arsonist who is trying to cover up Bosch’s hooker mother’s murder.  No spoilers please.

Much better start to the day this morning, assuming that a pre-dawn departure in the cold actually is better.  We avoided the stumpy water despite some wispy fog that real fog would laugh at.

Five Looper boats got out just as planned.

We’ve seen a lot of rivers and canals along the way so far, and for sheer beauty this stretch rivals the best of ‘em.

If there were good marinas to host us it would be perfect.  We’d even take just a pub and an LCBO.  Unfortunately there isn’t much of anything, however, which moves the area down our list.

Amazingly, we breezed through locks for second day in a row.  We figure we’re reaping some additional rewards for our clean living.

While on the subject of locks, a couple of things to note:

First, is there anyone alive who hasn’t wondered how on earth butane storage bullets are transported?  Well now we can provide the answer.  Someone plops them on a barge and they’re towed/pushed along the Tombigbee River.  We know this because we saw the setup coming out of the Aberdeen Lock.  That’s another big bucket list item we can check off the list!

Second, while sitting in the Glover Wilkins Lock Doug tried to find out when it was built.

Instead he stumbled on its Wikipedia page.

Really?  The Glover Wilkins Lock is a lock on the Tenn-Tom and was named after a guy named Glover Wilkins?  Darn right there are “page issues.”  The issues come from the absurdly obvious information it provides.  The most interesting thing about this web page is that someone actually took the time to create it.  Kids, don’t use Wikipedia as a book report source.*

And actually the real reason we zipped through the Wilkins Lock was the generosity of our old friend (from yesterday) the Graestone Express.

The lock-master said we could lock down ahead of her, but we first needed the captain’s permission.  The captain not only agreed, he even chatted us up as we all went around.  He specifically warned us about the dangerous tides on the Georgia coast.  Which is just great.  We weren’t scheduled to start worrying about Georgia for at least another four months.

Along the way today we discovered that a fine line exists between patriotism and litter.

We also discovered that pterodactyls aren’t extinct.

NOTE:  We face a few long and tough days between here and Mobile Bay.  Rain is in the forecast.  There’s only one marina to be found in the next 350 miles.  The boys will be miserable.  We may have to travel from before sunrise through sunset, on an unfamiliar waterway.  We’ll be exhausted when we stop for the night.  In this part of Mississippi and Alabama we may have no cell service.

All of which add up to the excuse for no more posts until we catch up at Dog River.

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* UPDATE:  The Wikipedia page for the Glover Wilkins Lock has been updated (by us) to include more interesting and pertinent information.  Now it in fact can be used for book reports.

UPDATE No. 2:  After we added the note about Misty Pearl, a bunch of other Loopers added their own boat names to our list of vessels traversing the Wilkins Lock.  However, some officious Wikipedia jackass has removed them all.