We were joined, yesterday afternoon, by two other Looper boats. One was very familiar, though we struggled, initially to place her. We had last met them in Chesapeake City, at the north end of the Dismal Swamp. Good heavens! THAT long ago! It was good to see them, and Berwick came over in their dinghy to visit, while Alexa stayed on the boat. They had come a long way, and they were tired.
The other couple (from Vancouver) arrived in their dinghy, having just taken their dachshund to the beach for a bathroom stop. We all chatted for a short time before they too went back to their boat. They were both gone this morning when we rose at around 8am.
Though we had decided to move south, today, there was no hurry. We saw one Looper boat making it's way south, ahead of us, but we also knew there would be a general exodus from further down the lake where the Looper Rendezvous had taken place earlier in the week. We weren't keen to encounter, or get in the way of those boats that we knew would now be making a 'run for it' down the TennTom.
We needed to fill up with fuel and water, so the obvious place to do that was at the head of the TennTom, at Grand Harbor Marina. Lucky we arrived when we did, because boats were coming in, looking for berths, thick and fast. We had called ahead and booked our berth for the weekend!
After our usual scrambled egg breakfast, we cleaned up the dishes and pulled anchor. I decided to have a shower off the back of the boat, in broad daylight...Waz followed suit. No sooner had we finished and were drying ourselves, than the Fishermen started arriving...at full throttle. We wer fortunate not to have been found out a couple of minutes earlier:)
Not much prep. to get us off the chain, as we were pretty much ready to go. Another lovely day, and no fog in the morning, so no waiting around.
We pulled the anchor without a problem and made or way back to the sailing line.
Leaving our pretty anchorage. We hate to leave, truly!:)
We turned the corner into the TennTom River and not far down the way was our destination. It had taken us just over an hour to get there from Dry Creek.
The lake was slightly choppy, but not much of a bother to us.
Happily refueled and pumped-out on the fuel dock, we were ushered into one of the few large docks available for transients, another fuel dock! The berth was narrow, and the wind was not helping us much, but the Captain docked us on the second try, with all available hands on the dock to aid us in turning around the skinny dock ends. Sighs of relief!
We were settling in, and putting stuff away, and we had a visitor on the main dock (vs the finger dock). His name is Bruce. We struck up a conversation and were invited down to visit his boat at the end of the dock we were part of. No rush! Lots to do before then. It was late morning, and though the worms were biting, we decided to go down and visit Bruce on HIS boat. He had guests, Angie and Mark, and we were invited aboard. Angie gave us a tour of Bruce's boat, and as the hour was getting later, we invited them all down to OUR boat for an impromptu lunch. I mentioned that I had a side of smoked salmon, so there was some incentive to visit:)
As it turned out I had TWO sides of smoked salmon, except that one of them was a little BAAAAD! The smell was something awful...and then I looked at the Best Buy date, and it was waaaayyyy back in July! Heavens! how could we have kept it THAT long, lol.
So, we put ourselves to finding enough goodies to eat for five people for lunch and managed to scrounge up a few goodies. We all sat on the fly deck in the gorgeous sun and finished off the salmon and everything else there was to eat...including some grapes. They had brought a dozen beer with them, and those got polished off over the next couple of hours. So, the afternoon was consumed by much hilarity....we haven't laughed so much in a loooong time. The afternoon turned into evening, and we all decided to go to the local Ribs Restaurant, The Rib Cage. Mark wanted us to experience a true 'local' Mississippi Barbeque. The ribs were great (but a little dry), the Kielbasa was sliced thinly and tasted pretty good, and the cole slaw excellent. The company, of course, was excellent too, and we are grateful to Mark for treating us to this lovely meal.
I drove Bruce's car too and from (being the designated driver, today) and the temperature had dropped considerably by the time we arrived back at the marina. We were frozen, upon arrival at the boat, even though we had thought to take our jackets with us.
We are grateful to the local people in all kinds of places who treat us to their local food and for their company. It certainly makes the trip all the better.
We slept like logs and didn't feel the need to get up early. This is becoming a bad habit:)
We are parked almost beside the Marina Office, on one of the fuel docks. can you see how skinny those spaces are?
We had booked the courtesy car for Sunday morning to go to Walmart in Corinth. The GPS took us a long way around, but we got there eventually. We had the car for two hours, but it took us 35 mins to get there, and then we got lost going home. The GPS wanted to take us 234 miles somewhere else...and though Waz entered the address of the Marina, we couldn't get a fix. Sooooo....we had to think of a place we knew that might be able to give us another GPS fix. Freddy T's restaurant came to mind...which is just up the road from the Marina, so we punched that into the GPS, and it gave us a fix...phew! A call to the marina to explain our 35 mins extension of time on the car, and our hope that whoever had their name down for it next wasn't going to be too pissed with us, was essential. The marina thought it was funny, of course. We weren't too happy, but we had our groceries:)
A walk was in order after a cup of coffee, and dinner was cooked on the boat tonight.
No intention to leave in the morning (Monday)....we have made arrangements with Cindy and Grant to go to Shiloh Civil War Battlefield, nearby. More on that tomorrow!
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