Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway

Halloween Greetings at MidwayMarina!

Jamie Whitten Lock, 84 foot drop

10/22/19  Tuesday
     Our adventure continued on the "Tenn-Tom" Waterway, which was built to connect the Tennessee River to the Tombigbee River so boat traffic could get through.   Next stop was Fulton, Mississippi at the Midway Marina.  We traveled through four locks to get to our destination.  The first lock was the Jamie Whitten Lock and it was by far the highest lock we have been through.  It is 84 feet!  This lock was closed for several weeks in September, due to an oil discharge accident involving a damaged oil barge.  Thankfully, the spill was contained in the lock and did not spread into the river, but I imagine that the clean-up must have been very difficult and costly.  It delayed a lot of Loopers as well.

Scary at Midway Marina

She actually is holding a fishing pole

Sunset

     The marina was very nice and we enjoyed getting to know some fellow Loopers who docked along with us.  The restaurant was great.  Karl and I decided to stay an extra day and the day was delightful with perfect sunny weather.


10/24/19  Thursday

    We traveled 60 miles today, along with 12 other Looper boats!  We all navigated through 4 locks together, which proved doable, but was time consuming!  Some boats rafted up with other boats and the dock master was very busy instructing us of the order in which we could enter, etc.  It was kind of interesting, but when we finally reached our destination in Columbus, Mississippi, it was getting dark and we were worn out.  Karl led most of the way and he did a great job.  There were a lot of logs, trees and debris in the river, so we traveled slowly and carefully, dodging the potential prop busters along the way!  We bumped at least twice on something, but amazingly the props came through ok.

Pretty Railroad bridge

     We got settled into the Columbus Marina around 6:30 pm and the last boat in our caravan came in well after dark.  We knew we were in for some bad weather, so we were happy to be in a secure location.

White bluffs, starting to see a little color change in the trees

White Pelicans

10/25/19-10/26/19  Friday and Saturday

     Rain, Rain, and more rain!  There were about 17 looper boats here and we all tried to make the best of the bad weather.  We used the loaner car to go to Walmart, but that was about all we did with a car.  It really stormed!  Good days to catch up on reading and watching TV.   We watched FSU football, they finally won a game! We all gathered under the covered slips to have docktails one night, which was fun.  We met some new folks and we enjoyed catching up with ones we hadn't seen for a while.  Everyone was talking about where they were heading next, all downriver of course, so we knew we were in for some boat "congestion!"