Rumpshaker Adventure 10/12

Hard to believe that yesterday, we had a high of 61 and today's forecast is for 84 degrees and 60% humidity...welcome to the south!

It's hard to leave this beautiful spot, but we still have 450 miles to go - so we must!  But first a few snapshots!

And then we start our day by passing through Whitten Lock & Dam.  It is an 85 foot drop - that's 10 stories high, folks!  It will be the first in a total drop of 414 feet between here and the Gulf of Mexico!  The lockmaster tells us that we will be able to lock through in 20 minutes, but it actually ends up taking 2 hours.  We are finding that this is a "norm" so we don't count on the time given us by the lockmaster.

We catch up with fellow loopers, Seraphim and Voyager, and hang with them through the Whitten and the next two locks, G.V. "Sonny" Montgomery Lock and John Rankin Lock.  These two locks are only a 30 foot drop each and we lock right through.  The John Rankin lockmaster was the steriotypical southern boy and we chuckled at his comment when we called him about locking through which was: "Y'all C'mon down and I'll be ready fer ya."  

After John Rankin Lock, we passed by a mulch outfit and other various sights including water moccasins swimming across the channel.

We'd really hoped to make it to MM377 and anchor out, but with the long wait at Whitten, we decided to be smart and stay at Midway Marina along with Seraphim and Voyager.  

After taking the dogs up and getting them fed, we decide to eat at their restaurant and have some great fish and hush puppies - after all, we ARE in the South!!  

Then it's back to the boat to shower.  All clean and relaxed, I sip on a glass of wine while I catch up our Blog!

Oh..BTW...Rob came up with an ingenius(?) way of keeping track of reds and greens to make sure we stay in the channel - LOL!!

  Quite a change of scenery than we enjoyed yesterday - very south-like.  Tomorrow is another day - more later!