It is a cold morning today, 45 degrees and clear skies. We are at the Joe Wheeler State Park Marina in Alabama. The Looper Fall Rendezvous ended last night and general departure is today. There was a lot of steam/fog coming off the water this morning and you should have seen the loopers leaving about 8:00. You could see them moving in and out of the fog banks as they headed for the river. I am not sure how they were going to navigate in that except by radar and you need to be pretty darn good at that.
We left about 9:15 headed up river toward Chattanooga. The fog for the most part had cleared and the day was partly sunny. We are travelling with Humbug again. This is the first time since Pentwater, Michigan.
No locks today and we are going to Ditto Landing in Huntsville Alabama. It is just past the Redstone Armory on the Tennessee River. We first past Decatur Alabama and had to wait for a railroad bridge in the downtown area. The river is wide and the first part was pretty deep by river standards. In the Decatur area the channel is marked and the guide says not to stray from the channel. After Decatur we traveled thru the Tennessee
River Wildlife Refuge. This was about 15 miles long and no homes or other structures, all nature.
As we approached Redstone we got into NASA country. This is where the space program was headed for a long time and was a real mainstay of the Huntsville community. They diversified enough that the reduction in the space program has not hurt Huntsville as much as it once could have. Also on the approach to Huntsville we could see some mountains not to far away and they are part of the Cumberland Plateau
that extends from Kentucky thru Tennessee and into northern Alabama.
We did pass a few tows going the other was on the river but not a lot of traffic. Quite a few bass fishermen on the water for the whole 56 miles we were on the water today. We actually travelled in a group of about 4 boats from Joe Wheeler to Ditto Landing and there were 2 loopers that were here already when we arrived because they started in the 1st pack today. Everyone is headed for Chattanooga. We had a chance to have docktails with the other loopers today and it was nice until the sun went down and it started to cool off. We had a nice dinner on Humbug and got caught up with Pete
and Carolyn on what we each have been doing since Pentwater. We will probably be travelling with them for a while now, maybe all the way to Carrabelle, FL. and maybe beyond.