Nashville

 We ended up with a slight change in plans. had wanted to go to the space museum but they were closed for cleaning on Monday, so we rented an Enterprise car and drove 100 miles north to Nashville and the Country Music Hall of Fame, spending the afternoon there, will keep the car today and go to the space museum, then up the river tomorrow.The car rental went well. No glitches, as did the trip to Nashville. Ate a great lunch with a great beer at a honky tonk and then walked up and down the "strip" listening to music at most of them, and watching people. Met a guy who said I looked like Michael Bloomberg. A few weeks ago I guy told me I looked like Mel Brooks. Not sure why I keep getting confused with old short Jewish guys. We drove by an interesting marquee on a Baptist church proclaiming "Jesus and Germs are everywhere". We are in the South. The Country Music Hall of Fame was great, a place I had always wanted to visit.

Downtown Nashville

Trans Am from Smokey and the Bandit

Charlie Daniels fiddle, he's always been a favorite

A wall of gold records

Elvis' custom limo

Home of the Predators. I hate the Predators.

Our lunch bar

Beer, Wings and pulled pork nachos, all great

Our dock buddy

Wheeler Lake

 We are slowly working our way up the river. Currently at Wheeler Lake and will head to Ditto Landing marina for a couple of days with plans to get a rental car and drive the 10 miles into Huntsville to tour the space museum tomorrow. I have always wanted to do that. Had an interesting morning yesterday pulling up the anchor. We were in a creek inlet, about a half mile up it, with some scattered homes on the shore. It was 15 feet deep and the anchor had set well the night before, but when retrieving the anchor there was a 16 inch concrete block impaled on the point. What are the chances? Anyway, I took the boat hook and lifted the back of the anchor up and it plopped into the river. Last night had a great private spot in  bay off the river and will leave this morning as soon as the fog lifts a bit. The fog doesn't bother me at all but the bass boats are out and they go at high speeds. I can see them on radar but they can't see me and this boat isn't fast enough to get out of the way.

Monarch on the swim platform

Wheeler Dam

Wheeler Lock

Heron riding the lock gate

Concrete block on the point of the anchor

Pretty foggy this morning

Muscle Shoals Recording Studio

 We are still in Florence this morning but plan on pulling out and moving upstream after Cindy gets her run in. Yesterday it rained all day so we sat tight, but took that opportunity to tour th Muscle Shoals recording studio. What a fascinating place and amazing history. Many,many hit songs from 1969-1970's onward were recorded there. It is a small building that provided recording facilities for some of the biggest stars of that era, often with musical support of the Swampers, a very talented local group of southern boys who played R and B provided the back up for the likes of Aretha Franklin, Percy Sledge and many others, even the Stones, Sonny and Cher and Paul Simon. The studio itself is a small building 25'x50', very unimpressive but the tour and the tour guide were tremendous. Today we are going to move up river. We've been dealing with the backwash of tropical storm Beta and it finally moved on and quit raining. We'll go through the Wilson Lock and maybe the Wheeler Lock, but no need to go to far. 175 miles upstream from here is the Nickajack Lock and it's closed until October 1, so we've got lots of time.

The recording studio

Statement for the Rolling Stones for recording "Wild Horses"

This guitar was hand crafted

Control booth

This piano was used by many of the greatest including Bob Seger and "That Old time Rock and Roll"

Florence Alabama

 We arrived in Florence Tuesday afternoon after coming up the river 40 mile or so. Pulled into the marina around 2. We were looking for good barbecue and the marina manager and his wife (from Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin) suggested a couple of places. We hiked up the hill a mile and a half to "FloBama's". Usually when we have done this, we'll find either good beer or good food, and if we are lucky, both. Unfortunately this place had neither. The wings and ribs I had were luke warm out of the microwave and the waitress didn't have a bad attitude, she just didn't have any attitude at all. Yesterday we took the marina courtesy car to Walmart and resupplied, then in the afternoon took it to the Salvation Army for Cindy to look for treasures, and then the highlight of the day was going to the Frank Lloyd Wright Rosenbaum home just a few blocks from the marina. It was really interesting. I never realized it, but Buster's construction often featured pretty similar concepts in his projects. We planned on leaving today and going up the river, but are dealing with the aftermath of tropical storm Beta and it's raining, with 3 inches predicted so will sit tight another day. We'll try and take the courtesy car across the river and visit the rock and roll museum on the Muscle Shoals side of the bridge. We will have to work on timing our up river trip with lock closures. A barge hit the Nickojack lock door which is up river 150 miles or so and the lock is closed, opening Oct 1-6, then closed until the 15th when it will open up again. Can't get to Chattanooga and Knoxville without going through it, but timing it shouldn't be hard.

A buddy at our dock

FLW Rosenbaum home

Corner glass in the FLW home

A "selfie" at FLW

Our dock in Florence

Tennessee River

 Over the past week we have worked our way up the Tombigbee to the Tennessee River, so finally we are in new territory. The trip up the Tombigbee was pretty uneventful. We had some nice anchorages, stopped a couple of days in Columbus Mississippi at a small marina there. Ate a great meal of shrimp and grits in Columbus, and did the best we can to solve our internet connectivity. We had been connecting flawlessly with an outfit called "Finally WiFi" which had a contract with AT&T for truly unlimited, unthrottled internet via AT&T towers. Last Thursday, AT&T arbitrarily and without warning, shut down the access, leaving all the subscribers in the dark.  This was bad because at the time we were watching Hurricane Sally pretty closely, and needed weather information. We stopped at Columbus to see what I could re-establish. We both have Verizon cell phones and in the past used them as hot spots, so I went to the Verizon outlet there and met two women who absolutely had no clue as to how to help. I spent 15 minutes talking to them and they just didn't get it. So I went to the AT&T outlet where a delightful girl busted her butt to try and help. Turns out we needed a business tax ID from Minnesota to qualify, then they would send a modem/router and give us what we needed. That would involve waiting a week to get it, and our business tax ID is expired anyway. So I called Verizon. I spoke to a guy who helped right away. We are now back online, but only have 60 gigs of data per month so it's a little limited, but will do for now. Verizon coverage in this part of the country is crappy, so we are still a little limited. We spent 2 nights anchored in Bay Spring Lake at the top of the Tombigbee, and it's unique because it is clear water, a rarity. We anchored off a beautiful campground, got a hike and a paddle in and Cindy got a good run in. Today we are now ascending the lower Tennessee River and will pull over at a marina for a couple of nightsnear lorence and Muscle Shoals. There is a rock and roll museum I want to go to and it's time to eat out and get some southern barbecue. They have a courtesy car I think, so will grocery up and re-provision on gin. Weather has been nice, even a little cool, 70's during the day and 50's at night, so sleeping has been good. 

Cruising up the Tennessee this morning. It's a big river.

Hiked this 4 wheeler trail this morning. We paddled over from our anchorage at the junction of the Tombigbee and Tennessee near Counce, TN

Looking south towards the Whitten Lock from our anchorage at the campground

Morning at anchor, Bay Springs Lake

Whitten Lock, up 85 feet

Huge chamber to drive the boat into at Whitten

Another moth that looks like a leaf

A camouflaged moth on the teak aft deck

Columbus

Columbus Marina

Escaping the storm

 Hurricane Sally is the big issue for everyone in the area now. After looking at the forcasts Sunday and Monday, getting all the boat chores done, we decided to pull out of Demopolis and head north. I was tired of being in one spot for that long anyway and cleaning up spider shit was getting pretty old. We left Demopolis yesterday morning and put on 65 miles or so, putting distance between us and the hurricane. Did the Heflin Lock mid afternoon and anchored last night in a delightful swampy oxbow at mile 278 on the Tombigbee. Today will go another 60-70 miles, a couple of locks to Columbus, MS where we might get a slip and explore the town and see what they have for thrift stores. Cindy got some pretty good treasures in Demopolis. It's cloudy, flat and forecast is for occasional showers today but nothing ominous and we are safe.

Leaving Demopolis

Bluffs going up river

Heron at work at our anchorage

Looking at the oxbow we anchored at last night

Demopolis

 We are finally back on the boat. Left Ely at 2 am on Wednesday morning, Sept 9, drove to Duluth and cabbed to the airport from Hermantown Storage where the car is parked for the fall. The flights and connections all went well, even had time for a good burger and beer at the Atlanta Airport. We rented an Enterprise car in Birmingham to get us the last 100 miles and Demopolis, where we arrived at 4 pm, so a 14 hour trip door to door. The boat was a mess. Dirty and covered with spiders and spider shit on every horizontal surface. Felt like a horror movie at times, but the inside was nice and clean. We cranked up the air conditioning. It was in the 90's with high humidity, and cleaned up the back deck so we could at least get on and off the boat without tracking in debris. Then made a quick run to Walmart for enough groceries to get us through the next morning. Then crashed. We were both toasted. Thursday we spent the day cleaning the boat and mad another run to Walmart for definitive provisioning. I had read online about spiders, spider shit and how to get things cleaned up. Other boaters use a cleaner called Spray 9. It works pretty well, melting the stains and scrubbing with a long handled boat brush. It took most of the day to get things presentable, but all is cleaned now and any residual stain is going to get bleached out by the sun. The next chore was to deal with the rental car. The initial reservation was to pick up at the Birmingham airport and drop off at the Demopolis Enterprise. Birmingham confirmed that Demopolis was closed due to the virus and we would have to drop the car off somewhere else. The nearest location was Meridian, Mississippi, 60 miles away. The marina dockmaster suggested we contact Western Alabama Public Transport. They run a bus to various towns in rural Alabama including Meridian, so Friday morning we drove to Meridian, dropped off the car and met the bus at the Meridian train depot for a ride back to Demopolis. They were right on time and it all worked out. We ate out at Kora's Place in Demopolis, run by a very religious black family and had a great burger, generic fries and no beer, sadly. Yesterday Cindy hiked to downtown Demopolis and worked the thrift stores picking up a bunch of treasures, so she's happy. I worked on more boat maintenance. All is done except for the vacuflush toilet repair I have to complete. It needs a new pump housing which I ordered and is here, but before I disassemble the system, we need a pump out, which they can't do until tomorrow morning, Monday. It's not a huge job, just a little unpleasant. Once that is done, we are ready to move on Tuesday morning if tropical storm Sally allows us. Right now it looks like a big rain event and some wind. We'll see.

Mud Daubers built condos under the dinghy cover and elsewhere. Had to clean up a couple of dozen nests.

Mud dauber nest

Spider shit staining the flybridge deck. I knew this was going to happen when we left the boat in early June.

More staining on the life raft container

The stains cleaned up nicely with Spray 9

Flybridge deck all cleaned up