9/27/18 Thursday: This was a very rainy, wet, soggy doggy day! I did some laundry, but all-in-all, it was a very lazy day.
We had several looper boats come in today, so docktails in the evening seemed in order. But see that gazebo on stilts?
The rainy weather cleared up a bit in the evening, so we did have docktails up there. I was a big chicken, because there were so many people out there, with just those tiny little sticks holding up the gazebo. I tried to stay on terra firma!
It was a grilled cheese and tomato soup kind of evening. A very uneventful day for us!
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9/28/18 Friday: Another sleep-in day, that started out cloudy, and broke out into blue sky and sunshine! How nice! It felt kind of a little like fall today. The air temperature was about 70 degrees. Just fine for a short sleeve shirt, and I didn’t even get all sweaty when I went for a walk! As we’ve been hanging out the last couple of days, we’ve realized that we need to start to think about life after the Loop. Surprisingly, we will be done in just 6-8 weeks! And we need to remember that there will be life after this, including the holidays! We’ve been making some Christmas plans with our kids & grandkids. It will be sooooo wonderful to see them all at Christmas! I really do miss them and being able to share life with them. Softball games, dance recitals, hiking, BBQ in the backyard, beer festivals, flag football, remodeling, gardening, and just being close to share in their daily lives of being awesome adults. We’ve even talked about long term – if we might move back to Washington someday – where would we live – would we want a boat – what kind of boat would we want – where would we spend the winters. It’s kind of fun to think about all the options available when retired!
I went for a walkabout the property here at Green Turtle Bay Resort. It was such a nice sunny cool day. I saw Dana (Misty Pearl) coming out of the Spa- she just had a massage and pedicure. Oooh – a massage would have been a really good idea!
There is quite an assortment of condos for rent here. I don’t know if they are all long term, short term, vacation rentals, or what, but the resort is nice.
Some great views of the Barkley lock. It was something like a 40 foot lift from the Cumberland River up to Barkley Lake when we came through a few days ago. This dam and the Kentucky Dam create this huge reservoir lake.
There was herd of turtles on this log, but most of them flopped into the water as I approached.
This is a really a set of two big lakes, joined together at the north end where the two dams are. We are the blue spot at the north end. Barkley Lake is on the east side of the green “Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area”. It connects to Kentucky Lake to the west which is even larger – 185 miles long. The state of Kentucky has over 1,900 miles of navigable waterways and the highest total of inland navigable waterways for any state in the continental USA. Just take a look at all this water! No wonder there are so many huge house boats and pontoon boats at this marina!
The resort has a swimming beach, complete with chairs and volleyball. I bet this is great on hot summer days!
On the hill right behind the beach, I found an old abandoned graveyard. Some of the headstones dated back to deaths in the mid 1800’s. Some of them were as recent as the 1920’s. It’s kind of sad that it isn’t taken care of.
Meanwhile, back at the docks, there wasn’t much going on.
A few boats left, a few boats came in. Such is the transition when one sits in one place for a few days – we get to watch the comings and goings of many!
We had docktails at the gazebo again, and we met some new loopers again! Amazing! When it started getting dark, we rode in the limo golf cart over to the Thirsty Turtle with Doug & Dana (Misty Pearl) and Brent & Karen (Second Wave). We had food, drinks, and enjoyed live music on the lawn. I didn’t get any pictures since it was kind of dark. Both boats will be leaving tomorrow to continue their journeys. We’ll get our car to start our week-long land adventure. It’s always strange to say good-bye to boat friends that we’ve traveled with off and on over the last 6 months, because we never know if we’ll ever see them again!
When I announced to Kenny that today was day 200 on the loop, he wasn’t excited. He said it felt a lot like day 199. 🙄. Surprisingly, this is only the 107th place that we’ve spent the night, so we’ve averaged about 2 nights per stop. We have traveled 4,375 miles, and have 514 hours of moving time. And we’ve been through 91 locks so far, with more to do. I figure we still have maybe 1700 miles to go. About 500 of that will be a side trip up the Tennessee River to Chattanooga and back. After the side trip, it will be the first of November. Then we have a minimum of three weeks til we get home. Could be much longer – it will just depend on the weather! It seems odd to be on the downhill slope to home. The interesting part is that until we get within about 40 miles of home, it is all unfamiliar territory. We have not explored much of the Florida Gulf coast north of Sarasota. And I’m sure we won’t dally and explore it this trip either. I know we’ll be like a horse smelling the barn when we get that close!