DAY 16

Friday October 2, 2009

Rained during the night, but cleared off early. We left the marina before 9 for our last day of travel. I was on the back swim platform and noticed our American flag was caught up around the pole. As I adjusted it and watched the breeze catch it, I saw it in a new light and thought of all the men buried under the earth at nearby Shiloh. I couldn’t help but think about the state of our country now and the direction it is headed. On a much less somber note, the Tennessee River and Pickwick Lake is soooo beautiful. The clear water and all the hardwood trees. The limestone cliffs. My camera and the small photos on the blog don’t do justice to the scenery here. It’s easy to understand why this is such a popular boating area. We came to the Wilson Lock and Dam at the end of Pickwick Lake. I’m telling you, this is one serious lock.It’s huge. It holds over 50 million gallons of water and took only 15 minutes to rise 95 feet. That’s 3.3 million gallons of water per minute. And we were impressed earlier at a lock that moved 1.2 million gallons per minute. The Lock is named after Woodrow Wilson, not after me. ☺ There are two lock chambers. One is a double chamber. You rise up in ther first chamber and then drive in to the next chamber and rise again.We went in the main chamber with the huge doors. When the lock finished filling, there was a door with a walkway that dropped down beneath the water and we drove out over it. I have tried to show the sequence with the pictures but I'm not sure how it will show in the blog. It was very interesting though. After making it through countless locks without much of a wait at any, we paid for it at the last lock. Two miles from our destination of the first leg of the loop, we had to wait for a tow in the lock.































We arrived at Joe Wheeler State Park Marina about 4:30. We did it! We finished the first leg of the loop. We will leave the boat here and return on October 25 for the Fall Looper Rendezvous before continuing on our way to the Gulf of Mexico. We celebrated the arrival at our destination with the champagne given to us by Lori and Eric Edling from J-Dock. It was delicious!!!