We got an early start today because we had almost 60 miles and 1 lock to go thru. The sky was partly cloudy at day break but it was mostly cloudy by the time we left. Within the first hour we had some light sprinkles but they never really amounted to anything.
The scenery was good with lots of limestone rock walls and some nice residential developments. All the homes have storage areas under the houses with stairs up to the first livable floor. It looked like a lot of the houses were elevated at least 12’ and maybe more.
Many of the banks where the limestone is located is on the outside of the bends in the river. The flood waters over the years have scoured the outside bends as it drains down river. The opposite side of the river is a sand bank.
As we got nearer the Pickwick Lock and Dam the water current started to increase. While we started out at approximately 9.6 mph we were down to about 7.8. I increased the throttles and got us back up to about 8.6 but it still kept dropping. As we neared the dam I think the current in the river was about 4.4 mph. We passed a sailboat about 2 miles before the dam and I think he was crawling along at about 2 mph.
The lock was busy and we waited about 50 minutes for them to take a tow up and bring the lock back down. That actually gave the sailboat the time he needed to get to the lock. The lockmaster even commented that they were letting a lot of water thru today and they would be increasing it later in the day.
The scenery on Pickwick Lake was great. We saw many large homes on the lake and a lot of them for sale. You almost wonder why??? One house even had a sign on the balcony saying it was for sale and was the best view on the lake.
The rain held off long enough for us to get to the marina and get tied up. Most of the rain was light with no real serious weather like they were predicting.
