Oct. 29, 2014 Wed depart Guntersville Free Dock MM 358

Had a restful evening as the only boat on the free dock, and no fog this morning so off we went at 0820 headed for as far as we could get in a day. We have one lock to go thru about 9 miles downstream called originally enough the Guntersville Lock. The locks are the reason we don’t know exactly how far we will go in a day. Sometimes you can get thru them quickly and other times you can be held up for 4-5 hours if a large tow and his barges are locking thru. We as pleasure boats are low on the totem pole for locking priority. Today we got lucky and when I called the lock he said to bring it on down as he had nothing in the area presently so we kept coming. We were in the lock tied up secure at 0939 and out of the lock at 0959 a 39 foot drop. We also used the auxiliary lock chamber which is smaller than the main chamber which being repaired.

We exited the lock and cruised on down to Ditto Landing Marina in Huntsville, Al. I had lost my America Great Loop Cruiser flag in a storm so I had ordered another one and had them ship it to the marina knowing that we would pass this way on our way back from Chattanooga. While there I thought I would get a free pump out and some ice when I noticed that diesel fuel was $ 3.75 a gallon, as you remember a lot of boats stopped at Goose Pond Marina because diesel was $ 3.99 a gallon so I decided to get some fuel also. It took about an hour to accomplish all this and then we were back on our way. We realized that we could make Decatur, Al and the Riverwalk Marina for the night. The nice thing about this marina is that it is a self-serve kind of place where if you don’t see anyone from the marina you send them your dockage fee of .50 cents a foot in the mail like in an honor system. They also have a restaurant, the Hard Dock Café there that is famous for its blackened catfish. So dinner it was and the World Series Game. The catfish was good but a little to blackened for me but all in all a nice night.

At the dock at Riverwalk Marina, Decatur, Alabama

The famous Hard Dock Café at the marina

The railroad bridge with 9.8 ft. of clearance that had to be raised for us