Down the Lazy River – Finale - dK Studio Photography

Hello and a happy Monday morning. I spent most of the weekend working around my house and trying to start to put things back in place after a semi-complete remodel of my townhome. Since the remodel, I have come to realize less is more and I have to make the decisions of what to keep, what to get rid of and what now to buy to fit the new look. Wish me luck!

For those of you that I have not put to sleep, bored to death or for those just tuning in, it seems like only yesterday that I was traveling down the Tennessee Tom Waterway with my dear friends, David Milly and his finance DeAnn Fowler on an 8-day Miss-Adventures. For 8 days we traveled south taking in the sights and sounds of river boating. What is left is fond memories and thousands of photos that I am not quite sure what to do with. It will take me months for me to look through them all.

The last leg of the journey had us pushing off from an over night stay on the dock at Bobby’s Fish Camp and heading south through our very last lock, Coffeeville. 13 locks down and one to go before we started seeing industrial civilization and the realization that our trip was slowing coming to an end. The whole trip down the Ten-Tom shows a true mixture of Americana, between the rich and not so rich. It allows you to see what water commerce is really all about.

It is a true adventure filled with the richness of southern landscape and southern culture. Along the way we took in the sights of some beautiful country and met a lot of interesting people. One of those interesting encounters was locking through a lock with the U.S. Coast Guard tug. They were out on the river setting new channel markers, as the river changes daily in depth and channel markers tend to get pushed around or broken off from their weighted foundations by the many barges traveling up or down the river.

So we bid the Coast Guard a fond farewell and headed south with our sights set on our last over night point of destination, Fairhope, AL. We knew that once we reached Fairhope, that we had one last night on the water before we made our final boat ride to our port of destination, Orange Beach, Florida.

As I have said, there was so much to take in along the way and once we were past the last dam it became a different scene with a lot more industry dotting the banks of the river, a few more barges and then the real slap in the face with civilization, Mobile and Mobile Bay. That could be and will be a singular subject for a future blog.

All in all it was a trip of a lifetime and I am so very glad I was able to share the time with David and DeAnn. For three people that had not spent an overnight stay together or even a few hours on a boat, I think I can easily say that we became a lot closer friends and were definitely a “well oiled” clean mean fighting machine boat crew. What a treat it was to have our daily healthy meals prepared by ”Chef DeAnn”. Even thought there were a few things I had to shuffle around on my plate, I could get use to it!

As we motored though Mobile bay with all the huge freighters and then cruised into the gulf, I realized what we had experienced for the last seven days was a real breathe of fresh air and a step back in time. Basically I felt like I received seven day’s of mental therapy. It would impossible to give full detail of the entire trip in the blog but I hope through the photos and the brief description, you have gotten a small sense of that the trip was all about. And what better way to end the trip then for Mother Nature to paint a final crescendo, putting the finishing touch on our trip. It was a glorious ending watching the sunset in Fairhope and needless to say, “an exceptional celebration was had by all at the Sunset Grill.”

The only thing left was tour feeble attempt to stage a Mutiny, take the ship over from “Captain Milly” and keep heading south. As you can see, that was a failed attempt. ENJOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!