Joe Wheeler State Park & Ditto Landing 9/29/19 - 9/30/19

Stats: Total days - 20, Travel days - 13, Miles today - 57, Total miles - 795

We left out of Florence Marina around 9:00 headed for Wilson Lock.  It was only 3 miles away so we called and tried to time it right.  There were a few birds that decided to take a rest on our boat railing.  Lucy was none to happy about it.

I have not talked about the locks much on this blog, figuring most everyone got their fill after Pittsburgh.  I did take a few pictures of the Wilson Lock as it was pretty cool.  It is one of the highest lifts on the loop at close to 90 feet.  The normal auxiliary chamber that we would use was being worked on, so we used the main chamber.  You can see that the auxiliary chamber actually has 2 chambers.  You go out of the 1st one and then into the 2nd one to get to the top.

Main chamber doors, you can see how high the water needs to be raised.   

This was the most turbulent lock that we have gone through.  Not just on the this trip in all of my trips.  Good thing we had the boat tied and fendered off.  There was no way to keep the front of the boat off the wall, even when using the thrusters.

Another 1st for us was that the upper gate did not swing open like most but instead was lowered into the water and you drove over it.

I know, more houses, but thought the his and her's idea was a good one.  Just a wee bit out of my range.

It was kind of neat to pull into Joe Wheeler State Park.  We drove here last year for the Looper Rendezvous and thought how cool it would be to have our boat here.   A year later and we are doing it.

After I did some washing on the boat, Marcia vacuumed, cleaned and did laundry, we so needed happy hour at the pool.  You can see the top of the boat behind the pool.  We ended up eating dinner at the restaurant and then took it easy the rest of the night.  Cell signal is not good here, even with the booster, and our Direct TV is not working at all now.  Just keeps saying "receiving satellite signal", but remains at 0%.  DTV is of no help.  I am going to try and switch out the coax cable when we get some downtime.  It had been working fine for most all the the trip.  The dish is tracking a signal.  Any other ideas from my Techie friends - Dave Frey - Nate ?????   

This was our view as we left Joe Wheeler this morning.

We had about 57 miles to go today, so I did run about 30 minutes on plane.  Another 1st for us today was we had to call a railroad bridge and have it raised so we could get underneath.  We got lucky on the timing as they were opening for a barge that we had just passed.  After we and the barge got through they lowered it back down.  About 10 minutes later I heard another boat call and they said it was going to be awhile.  They said 1.5 hours or more. 

Beautiful cruise today.  Marcia drove for about an hour.  Cluck Norris was keeping a watchful eye on things.

Lucy really wanted to stop here, but there was no dock.  She will have to settle with getting food from a bag instead of a silo.  (home of Meow Mix)

Lake was pretty wide at the beginning, but narrows to  more of a river after about 10 miles.  Water is really clean here.

We arrived at Ditto Landing Marina.  I know - we thought of Evan Evans also.  He said he has actually been here.  We took on fuel to get a free nights stay, and they also had a free pump out, so we did that also.  Good news is that I hit a new milestone.  Tracker had me getting 1.01 mpg this leg.  I KNOW!  When was the last time someone was happy about getting 1 mpg.:)  They did have a replica of the Ditto Ferry here.  Reminded me of Jose Wales and the Missouri boat ride. 

 Another hot but nice day. 

Dinner on the boat and a short hike afterwards.  Going to try and watch the Bengals game tonight.  We are getting it through You Tube TV, just mean that they are hard to watch sometimes.