Friday, Sept. 4th. Last and final posting

This will be the last and final blog of the trip. A few fun facts are that:

#1, we made it all the way to our goal of Pensicola,Florida

#2, we made it home safely!! see us above at the Hubert H. Humphrey Airport Terminal in Minneapolis on Tuesday afternoon - Don and Jan, then Rich and I on the right - and we're still all getting along!!!!

#3, Our boats and motors made it home safely in a little less than two days! after going 1,677 miles in 23 days of water travel, averaging 72.4 miles per day.

#4, we went through 43 Lock and Dams total. First 27 on the Mississippi, then one on the Ohio River, then one BIG one going to Barkley lake in the dead of night with storms all around us, then the Tennessee River. Then an 84 foot one to the Ten-Tom Waterway with 14 more along the way to Mobile, Alabama, the last being three miles south of the infamous Bobbie's Fish Camp. (uk). Total: dropping us 740 feet, lifting us 112 feet bringing us to a grand total of 628 feet below the sea level of St. Paul, Minnesota.

#5 Should of kept count of barges, tow boats,( hooked together, called tows.) But we didn't. Countless. Amazing the transportation system out there on these rivers! Each barge is equivalent to 56 semi-trailers full. the average tow is 15 barges hooked together, being equivalent to a total of 840 semi-trucks full!.... 15 barges is equal to three miles of train cars or 35 miles of semi-trucks parked back to back. We saw barges full of corn, rock of all varieties, scrap metal, coal, etc etc. It takes 300 acres of corn, off the cob, to fill one barge. It takes 1 1/2 miles for a loaded 15 barge tow to come to a complete stop. The towboats have between 4800 and 6480 horsepower. The largest tows we saw were empty barges totalling 42 pushed by one towboat!

#6. We used 311 pounds of ice in our cooler.

#7. We stopped for gas 24 times. Carried six, five gallon extra cans of gas besides the 26 gallons on our Bennington pontoon. Rich would fill the boat on the run, otherwise we'd lose precious running time. Lucky he's big and strong.
Don would do that, too. Totally: we used 404.51 gallons of fuel.

#8. Funniest thing happening? Riding around Fulton, Missouri with Amber who had a car full of "White Folk" The town was abuzz. And she even had a really good time with them! Her sister said, she should have told people "we were family from her Daddy's side!"

#9. Scariest time? Surrounded by storms, no where to park and, having to go thru the Barkley Lake Lock and Dam in the pitch dark. If we used our big lights we would choke on bugs in about two seconds.

#10. Would we do it again? Yes, but with a larger motor, then we could get out of perilious spots a bit quicker.

#11. The best of the trip? tied between scenery, the best being around the Wabasha/LaCrosse area, and North of St. Louis, the white cliffs, and Pensicola/Mobile Bay tied with early, still mornings on the boat, running down the river, nothing but us and the 'summer bugs' singing so loud and also tied with all the people we met, being so friendly and helpful, so many giving us a courtesy car to use at the Marina's and giving us countless information and advice.

and last but not least #12: Family and friends, you probably thought we were a bit goofy to do this but...this experience was absolutely awesome! We are so glad we did it and it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. To all, we send our love; thank you for following our Blog, and this is the conclusion of "Our Great River Adventure"! The End. Patty and Rich

Friday, third continuation

Dang, I post pictures, then they decide to change location on the paper, some of this, you must wonder if she (me) knows what she's doing. Nope is the answer, I'm just winging this whole thing........... anyway- here's a few more pictures from along the way. This is "Ruby" - she joined us at times when it may have been boring or monotaneous (spell check where are you?) . Here she was delivering Don a Happy Birthday message and present. She came out for Jan's Birthday also. Anyway, it's good to be silly at times.

We had alot of wonderful scenery along the way. I wish I could post more than three pictures on each blog, but I sure cannot figure it out. Please go to the last and final posting.

Friday, Sept 4th continued.

So here are on Monday..................
It was amazing how easily they can load up boats. So here's our boat in the middle, ready for it's ride home. What a good boat, especially the 50hp Yamaha. That thing ran at 5000 to 5200 rpm day after day after day, never complaining. Good motor.

Bahia Mar Marina has equipment and crew that did a remarkable job. On the left they lifted the boat out of the water and drove it to where the flat bed truck was waiting. We had National Freight do the hauling and Jody did a great job. On the right, they needed to put it into a belly band sling to get it onto the front of the trailer.

Actually, that's Don and Jan's boat on the left, our boat was on the trailer all ready - same principal anyway.

The truck left Monday afternoon about 1:00pm. What a relief. No more boats to take care of. We went to the "Oarhouse".

Tuesday, we caught a plane in Pensicola to come home, stopped for two and 1/2 hours in Atlanta, then arrived home Tuesday at about 4:00 pm.

All the kids came over Tuesday night and it was soooo great to see all.

Wednesday, at 10:30 am, the boats were at Watergate, Marina, in St. Paul, right where we began.

Next blog please:

Fri,

Friday - how could it be Friday already??

Hi all, I will continue where I left off. Sorry for the lapse in time. So here it was, last Saturday, and we leave Mobile Bay in Mobile, Alabama and head to Pensicola, Florida. We went about 20 more miles in the bay, and got onto the Intercoastal Waterway to Pensicola. Approximately 52 more miles and we'd be at the end of our trip.....It was us and every boater out there. What a beautiful day and it was Saturday. It's just that they had BIG boats. One big one with a young cocky man was coming straight at us, turned right in front of us, swamped our boat - everything was sop and wet. Air horns or not, it was like "what the H is he doing?????" What a nice young gentleman! oh well, It was a great ride anyway.

Beautiful sand beaches. Beautiful homes, both big and small. Beautiful marina's and we made it to our destination!!!!! It was a proud, exciting day. l,677 miles to get there! Average speed: 12 mph. That's a whole lot of hours on a boat, but it literally flew by. What a wonderful experience. Anyway, I'm getting off the beaten path. We made it to Pensicola and I'd love to go back there again. It truly is a pretty place with white sand beaches going on and on. We landed at one and met some more nice people who were kind enough to take some pictures of us. We celebrated a bit, enjoyed the water, and needed to move on - dark clouds were moving in.

The water never felt so good. It was SO hot out - mid 90's at least and 100% humidity. we were melting on the boats. This was the first time on the whole trip that we just got off the boats, and went in the water. The rivers were not safe with currents and varmints in there. Mississippi was especially thick and dirty. We did see a water snake once on the Tennessee in Kentucky Lake (that was enough). Saw lots of mysterious fish and stuff from the rivers hanging in places and on walls, or pictures, thereof. Didn't want to swim with that stuff. Heard of a 8' shark (I forgot what kind of shark,Dugan, that you told me about) on the Ten Tom Waterway, so no matter how much I love to jump in the water, there was no way I could for 1,677 miles in the dead of a hot summer down there!

We got on our way again. We were going to the Bahia Mar Marina which was very nice and they would easily haul our boats out. They had a great bar and grill there "The Oarhouse". We were going to be staying at the Marriott Residence Inn, that was great. Anyway, we were about 100 yards away from the entrance of the Marina, we were all a bit excited and sort of left the channell, kind of taking a short cut. (you don't do that) Don was leading and all of a sudden he's yelling over the radio to us "Watch out, there's rocks, stop (too late) @#$%& BANG! We're hitting and going over a BIG pile of rocks and luckily they only bent our prop all to H... That was so shocking! All that way and nothing had happened prior to this. Oh yeh, there were logs in the river all the time, yes hit a few here and there but no damage (luckily) We were so glad that it did happen at the end but why at all?? Anyway, we really hit hard. Luckily we didn't beach on top of the pile - that would have been embarassing - oh what the heck. So on we go, limping into the marina, a person could probably see the boat shaking - we sure could feel it. We Made It!!!.

Lamar, the Yellow Cab driver for the next three days, took us to the Hotel after a while. A storm did move in - so we did not have a chance to even swim in the pool that day. We ate seafood that night, and Sunday night and Monday night........what a great area.

Sunday came and we went to the Marina and got the boats ready for transporting. Time to clean them all out, secure them for a nice truck ride home, pack things up, pack what we needed to fly home and ......please go to the next blog so I can put a few more pictures on............

Tues, Sept 1st

Hi everyone! Don and Jan, Rich and I are at the Atlanta Airport. We'll be home at 4:00. The boats left yesterday afternoon and will be at Watergate at lunchtime tomorrow. I'll send more stats on trip later. Having to much fun!!! Love to all

Monday continued.

We made it thru the harbor and were to go onto Mobile Bay - yeh, the Gulf of Mexico! Whoa, was this a big body of water! Here we are in our pontoon from Deer Lake going onto Mobile Bay! Salt water and all. The depth ranged from three to six feet deep. Very shallow for such a big area. We were very lucky with no wind, no traffic and about an hour of time to get over to where we were staying. Yay, we were heading to the Mariott Grand Harbor for the night. Day and night from Bobby's Fish Camp.

At 7:09 we arrived at our destination. This was so beautiful. Well the next blog will be about going over to Pensicola, Florida. Bye for now, love to all