It's relatively close to the Civil War battlefield at Shiloh and we wanted to go back to the visitor center.We tried the swinging chairs on the marina front deck but it was after dark and there a zillion and one giant spiders out looking for their diner. I headed back to the boat!
As soon as we walked in the place we recognized it as where we ate last time when we were traveling with Jim and Linda (on Selah at the time). The place with biscuits and believe it or not - chocolate gravy!! At the time they gave us a small container of it to try.... as I recall we all passed :-)
The first Civil War battlefield either of us had ever visited in 2010 did not disappoint the second time around. Mostly due to the new movie which was EXCELLENT!!
Graphics showing the changing front lines over the two day battle were SO helpful. Wish my history teachers had this kind of stuff available back in the days ..... We had the cutest little van like thing to drive around :-)
While I checked out the Visitor Center displays (did I mention it was air conditioned in there?), Steve took a walk (in the 90 degree heat and sun) down to the cemetery on the site.Over 23,000 men were killed, wounded or missing in this early in the war two day battle. Want more history? Click here.
I think if you wanted you could spend days walking around tracing the movements of the regiments involved.
One of the nicest memorials is to the Confederate soldiers killed in this battle.It's a very sobering place to visit ......
We left Grand Harbor early Friday morning - continuing to move south even as the days continue to be hot and humid. 34 miles to Bay Springs Marina for the night. So about 4 1/2 hours.
Temperatures: On the water? No problem. Stop for the day? Plug in :-)
Travel was lock free - which is nice. But that will change shortly as we move on the Tenn-Tom Waterway.
This is the waterway completed in 1985 that made it possible to complete the "Loop" without the need to travel the Lower Mississippi River which is very difficult to travel in a pleasure boat due to lack of marina's for fuel and tie ups. Even anchoring on the Lower Mississippi can be a real challenge. For the interesting history of the Tenn-Tom waterway, click here.
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| Bay Springs Lake |
From the map you can see the tremendous coastline filled with enough coves to last a long time!
The area is actually reminiscent of the Canadian canal areas. If I were just shown the picture above, I would have said it was somewhere along the Trent!
Once we entered the canal portion of the upper Tenn-Tom, travel was so easy :-)
A non eventful day that ended with us tied up at the Bay Springs Marina. The challenge for the day? Trying to position the boat so we were able to have the satellite dish could 'see' SW in order to have a signal. Sad I know but that's the way it is :-) We ended up with the boat sticking 10 feet off of the dock !
Nice building and what they had was nice as well but the videos promised weren't available. Sad.
Might as well find a place for lunch!!Subway was the best we could do but we did find our first Piggly Wiggly :-) When I first saw Driving Miss Daisy I thought this was a made-up chain of grocery stores. Little did I know!
But that's not why we were up early .... Steve woke me with a "we've got a problem." Mmmmm .. ok. Is there coffee yet?
Seems the port fuel tank is leaking! Waking to the smell of diesel is definitely not fun or good. So we spent the morning deciding what to do. The leak wasn't bad but something that needed to be addressed - like getting the fuel out of the tank (both the starboard and port tanks had about 120 gallons of diesel).
Choices: go back 40 miles to a marina that could pump the fuel out - but not until Monday (today is Saturday). Or find a way to contain the diesel dripping until we can reach a marina farther down river that could assist us.
In the end, we devised a way to catch the drips in a plastic container which we could then pump out into a 5 gallon container using a hand pump that we use to change the transmission fluid.
It had to be pumped every hour to keep the diesel from running into a space along a stringer. Fortunately not enough diesel leaked to end up in the bilge,
So close off the starboard tank and draw all of the fuel needed for the engine from the leaking port tank and off we went! The marina in Smithville (our destination) said they could take care of the diesel if we could get it out of the tank.
Sounded like a deal :-)
Meanwhile our "short day" of 4 1/2 hours, 32 mile day turn into a quite longer day.
We had 4 locks. The first two went well but at the third and fourth locks we had to wait for upbound tows. Total time lost about 2 1/2 hours. Plus the late start.
Plus the storm that rolled through just as we were a short 20 minutes from the marina. I told Steve to not bother with the flybridge plastic .... we can just drive from below. Mmmm... forgot about the limited visibility during a driving rain storm.
We were just happy to be in by 6:45 and close to dark.Deal with the leak issue tomorrow - for now set the alarm for every hour and a half so Steve could get up and pump the leaking deisel out of our makeshift solution of a pan.
And a weird thing began to happen. The leak became less and less throughout the evening. So now pump it every two hours.
By this morning, it no longer was leaking!
Not sure why (the leak is near the top of the tank and we burned enough out to be below the leak? Less pressure with some of the fuel burned?) but we'll take it. Of course it still needs fixed (which may require pulling the engine up and sitting it on the salon floor). But for now we'll continue to use up the remaining fuel in that tank and just get by with only one 160 gallon tank instead of two. No problem.
We'll stay another night and move on Monday .....
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