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............
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