10/14/11 - 11/5/11   After visiting Chattanooga, TN we're back on the Tennessee River west bound toward Wheeler State Park at Rogersville Alabama.   We were a little ahead of schedule so we took our time and enjoyed the fall colors and the wildlife (lots of Bald Eagles)  We arrived in Rogersville on 10/20/11, three days early for the America's Great Loop Cruisers Association Rendezvous but we enjoyed the park and took long walks in the woods.   Lots of deer.  When the conference got started there were 53 boats from all over the U.S. and Canada and over 250 people attending.   At this point in our journey we had already taken the boat over 6000 miles so we didn't expect to benefit from the educational part as much as previous meetings but we found the  classes useful.   Of course we enjoyed seeing old friends and made some new ones.   That was probably the last time that we will see some of those folks and we were sad to see it come to an end.   We were back on the river toward the Tenn-Tom Waterway which is near the intersection of Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama.   The Tennessee Valley Authority built hydroelectric dams on the river to supply electricity to the nearby communities but I was surprised to see the number of coal fired power plants we passed.   We saw many barges piled with coal.   We were southbound now and as we began to approach the Gulf of Mexico, we felt the end of our trip growing near.

10/2/11 -  10/13/11    The Tennessee River does not flow as fast as the tributaries of the Mississippi so the travel was much more relaxed.   Deciduous forests beginning to turn their fall colors covered the limestone river banks.  Anchorages were easy to find so we anchored several nights on our way to Grand Harbor Marina for Lace's birthday.   The marina is a big one and it had several loaner cars for transient boaters.   There happened to be five other looper boats there that day and everyone went into town for supper at Freddy T's.  A good time was had by all.  At this point, we decided to depart from the usual looper route and take a side trip to Chattanooga Tennessee.  The first lock was the Wilson which has the largest lift east of the Rockies at 84 feet.  We were going up-river which means we entered the lock and after they closed the gates, they added water to the chamber until we reached the level of the river above.  The locks were mainly built for commercial traffic so the turbulence inside as they filled it tossed our relatively small boat around quite a bit, but we managed to control it without damage to life or limb.  Over the next five days we anchored up in increasingly beautiful surroundings as we neared the Appalachian Mountains.  We really enjoyed Chattanooga.  In fact, Lace believes it is her favorite city of any we have visited.  The city is spanking clean, they have a world class aquarium, they have free public transportation, and there are sculptures mounted on sidewalks throughout the city.  The city was of course made famous by the Glenn Miller Band in 1941 with it's recording of "Chattanooga Choo Choo". The song refers to a railroad route which took passengers from the eastern states to the southern states beginning in the late 1800's. We spent two days there.  Lace got a hair cut, we visited a once-a-week farmers market, got groceries at an upscale organic grocery store, and went to the I-Max theater for a 3-D movie about orphaned elephants and orangutans.

9/22/11 -  10/1/11   As we entered the Mississippi, the first landmark was the St. Louis Gateway Arch, a monument to westward expansion completed in 1965.   I had been up in the arch years before and St. Louis is not easy to visit, so we didn't stop.  A little further down the Mississippi is Hoppies Marine Services at Kimmswick, Missouri.  I believe I read somewhere that Hoppie Hopkins is descended from one of the last lamp lighters whose job it was to go around and light the navigation lamps on the river.  Although it is just a rather haphazard arrangement of floating barges tethered to the river bank, it is a favorite stop for loopers because it is the last fuel stop for a couple of hundred miles and Fern Hopkins gives a daily briefing on the latest river conditions.  The next evening we tied up to the lock wall at the Kaskaskia River where there were already 9 other boats tied.  Great happy hour!  The Mississippi River is extraordinarily turbulent in places and it takes continuous attention to steer the boat.  The next couple of days were rainy and foggy so we found an anchorage behind a wing dam and waited it out.  Wing dams are rock structures that radiate from the shoreline to keep the channel deep and navigable.  The next day we turned into the Ohio river at Cairo, Illinois (Unlike the Egyptian capital it is pronounced kay-row).  The Ohio River was even swifter than the Mississippi and since it flows into the Mississippi we were now going against the current.  At one point, as we were passing a dam, the boat actually stopped briefly which means the current was between 6 and 7 miles per hour.  A short time on the Ohio and then an even shorter time on the Cumberland brought us into Barkley Lake.  The starboard engine was running hot so we took a day at Green Turtle Bay Marina to change a water pump impeller and we were off again and into the Tennessee River.

9/12/11 -  9/21/11  Our tour through Illinois began with Joliet.  The free city dock was walking distance to a Harrahs Casino so we went over for breakfast.  I won about 40 bucks at a quarter slot and we left with our winnings.  Another couple of days at anchor and we landed at Ottawa City.  The city dock is suppose to accommodate about two and a half boats but more arrived later and we ended up with seven boats "rafted up".  We went to the grocery store and were given a ride back to the boat by the former owner.  He ended up ferrying several other boaters to and from the store.  He said his wife still worked at the store and he enjoyed doing it.  We were beginning to see an increase in commercial traffic as we approached the Upper Mississippi river and tug boats pushing 15 barges were not uncommon.  Also we saw a LOT of Asian Carp, an invasive species that has taken over the Illinois.  In fact we passed through a section of the river that has an electrified barrier to prevent them from passing into the great lakes.  They have an instinctive escape behavior that makes them jump out of the water when boat motors are nearby.  People in small open boats have been injured  when the fish jump out and hit them.  We talked to a boater that had to throw seven overboard after one "attack".  Anchorages were now harder to find because the river level was low.   Several more days at anchor and a tie up at Havana and Hardin and we found ourselves at Grafton, the gateway to the Mississippi.

9/10/11 -  9/11/11   At last, after dodging weather for weeks on Lake Michigan, we made our final crossing from Michigan City, Indiana to Chicago.  I was determined not to pay $100/night for a slip but while investigating mooring balls (much less expensive but then you have to pay a water taxi to get ashore), the guy on the phone said "Would you like to stay on the 'wall'?".   It was mid priced so I told him we'd take a look.   It turned out to be a great move.   The tie-up was next to the sidewalk along the harbor, it was walking distance to downtown, and the people watching was off the chart.   We arrived on a Saturday afternoon so we were present for the weekly meeting of the "Poor Man's Yacht Club".  This assemblage on the "wall" of several boats with their members, a couple of buckets of chicken wings and an unlimited supply of beer was apparently formed as a protest to the membership fee of the two yacht clubs on either side.  We walked to the Navy Pier and then came back to the boat and watched a top-notch fireworks display that was in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of Nine-Eleven.   We got up Sunday morning, walked through Millennium Park to Michigan Avenue, and went to church at the Forth Presbyterian, a cathedral built in 1871.  The sanctuary was jaw dropping.  The river route to Mobile Alabama begins with a tour of  downtown Chicago.  We went under 40 old bridges that are so low that we had to fold down the radar mast on Confetti to be able to get under them.

8/21/11 - 9/8/11   Saint Ignace is a nice tourist town just before you turn into Lake Michigan.  We saw more fudge shops than one can count and the usual local art.  We did enjoy a tour of a retired ice breaker ship that was used to clear a path for freighters.  Maybe the center of tourist attention in Lake Michigan is Macinac Island (pronounced mac-in-aw (but why?)).  The only ways to get there are by ferry or private boat.  It has no cars so transportation is provided by several hundred horses or bicycles.  After talking to friends that had gone there we decided to bypass it knowing we would miss overpriced meals and more fudge shops.  In the summer time the prevailing winds on Lake Michigan are moderate and from the southwest then they shift into the northeast and get stronger and harder to predict.  Over the next three weeks we found ourselves dodging into anchorages or marinas waiting for the weather to change so we made little progress.  When we did move it was usually in marginal conditions and at least once we encountered 5 foot waves.  We were not enjoying Lake Michigan.  The highlight was when we got to Saint Joseph.  We wanted to spend some time in Chicago when we eventually got there but it is expensive to park the boat near downtown.  When we got to St. Joseph we expected to be trapped by high winds for several days so we decided to take the train into Chicago, an adventure in itself.  We took the two hour ride in, got aboard a topless bus, jumped off at the Art Institute for a couple of hours, got back on and finished a very entertaining two hour tour of downtown Chicago.  We then got back on the train and got back to the boat in time to feed the cats.  A great day.

8/17/11 -  8/20/11  A nice little town called Little Current separates Georgian Bay from the North Channel.  We stopped for provisions, anchored out and then came back in the morning to attend a radio show for cruisers.  We spent the next several days cruising the channel.  It is similar to Georgian Bay but easier to anchor and I enjoyed it more.  It was late in the afternoon when we came across the U.S. border.  We weren't up to continuing on for another hour to make it to Drummond Island, which is the customs port, so we put up our yellow quarantine flag (indicating that we had not cleared customs) and anchored for the night.  I forgot to put on the anchor light which may have had something to do with the visit we got from U.S. Customs / Border Protection.  They woke us up at 10pm and after waiting for us to get dressed put two officers aboard to check our documents and a brief search of the boat.  We know the drill since we have been boarded twice before but not in the night.  They were very pleasant but cautioned us about not showing a light.   The next day we went into Drummond and cleared customs without incident.   It felt good to be back in our home country and we went to DeTour Marina, Michigan.  DeTour is the crossroads between Lake Michigan, Lake Huron and Lake Superior and quite a few freighters passed by us carrying corn, wheat, gravel, rock salt and taconite (processed iron ore).   These freighters are up to 1000 feet long and work until the lakes freeze over.  We took caution cruising these waters remembering the Edmund Fitzgerald, a 700 foot freighter that went down with all hands in November, 1975 after encountering 35 foot waves on Lake Superior.   We attended church Sunday morning at Union Presbyterian in DeTour and departed to an anchorage near Government Island.

8/9/11 -  8/16/11   Georgian Bay is called the land of 30.000 islands.  Some of them are only a few square feet but they must be navigated around just the same.  We like to anchor out most of the time rather than go to marinas not only because of the obvious savings but also the quiet and privacy.   Anchorages were sometimes hard to find though because the banks were so steep that when there was a protected area large enough for the boat, the water was too deep to get an anchor down to the bottom.   Also many of the islands are inhabited and they get electricity by way of underwater cables that are marked on the charts so that you can avoid anchoring there.   The water is so clean and clear in the Great Lakes that as soon as we entered Lake Ontario Lace began doing a little laundry every day in a bucket.   It only took a few minutes and kept us from spending time in a laundromat when we did get to a marina.  We spent the next 8 days wandering about, only making about 20 miles a day.  Probably the highlight of Georgian Bay was a fjord like bay called Baie Fine.   It is long and narrow with vertical sides rising 200 feet in some places.   We anchored for the evening and rowed the dinghy to explore the rocky shoreline.

8/4/11 -  8/8/11  After raising us over 800 feet above the level of Lake Ontario the locks of the Trent-Severn were now lowering us back down to the level of Lake Huron.  Lock 43 took us down 47 feet and we spent the night on the lower side.   One of the final locks is called the Big Chute and is not a lock at all.   It is actually a marine railway and lifts boats out of the water on slings and transports them over land down to the next level.   If there was a primary goal on this entire trip it was to enter the Georgian Bay and North Channel on the north side of Lake Huron.   This area has been described as the best cruising in the entire world by veterans.   The area is part of the Canadian Shield which is characterized by granite with a thin layer of soil or gravel with coniferous trees growing out of the cracks.   Some of these rocks date to the origin of this planet, some 4.5 billion years.   The scenery is spectacular but we actually found Georgian Bay to be somewhat uncomfortable because the channels through the rocks are often narrow and the penalty for inattention to navigation could be a bent prop or worse.   We actually did bump the bottom once but came away with no damage.   When we were in Elizabeth City, NC we met a fellow on his boat that lives here and he invited us to call him when we were in this area.   We anchored at Beckwith Island and he and his wife, who is a native Ojibwa Indian, came out to pick us up in one of his boats.  They took us to shore and then drove us to a restaurant for lunch and then the grocery store.   The Ojibwas experienced somewhat the same treatment from the government that American Indians did.   They were shuffled onto three remote island reservations as refuse and expected to expire.   As it turned out they survived and now struggle to hold on to their heritage as young members of the tribe move away the the native language becomes obscure.  

 7/30/11 -  8/3/11   The locks along the Trent-Severn Canal are often remote.   Several that we went through have no roads leading to them and are only accessible by water for the operators.   As we are nearing Lake Huron we seem to be seeing more cottages along the shore some modest and others large and ornate but always with a dock and boat(s).  Our luck didn't hold very long.   The three month old pump that transferred fresh water to the faucets quit and we were forced to go a little out of our way to Barrie, ON to get a new one.  The Confetti holds 250 gallons of water but it is inaccessible without the pump.   On the way to Barrie we passed quite an impressive home with it's own helicopter and we were later told that it belongs to the Swanson family (of Swanson dinner fame).   Barrie has both bus and rail service to Toronto so after installing a new pump we took the bus in.   Toronto is an impressive town.   It reminded us of New York city in a lot of ways.  We saw new and impressive architecture growing out of very old surroundings.  It has the Ice Hockey Hall of Fame which we didn't go into because we don't know the second thing about hockey (everyone knows the first thing: missing teeth).   It obviously has a vibrant business community,  the Toronto Stock Exchange is there, and even a smaller version of Times Square with ten story television screens.   We walked until we couldn't walk any more on pink granite sidewalks and then went to the train station and did a crossword puzzle until the "GO" (Government of Ontario) train came to take us back to Barrie.   The next day we were off again with still more locks to pass through before we reached Georgian Bay in northern Lake Huron.