Tuesday, September 28, 2021.
Temp: 85/59, Humidity: 49/100%, Top Wind: SW5 mph, Precip: none-sunny!, Miles Traveled: 50
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This started out as a really nice day, and pretty much stayed that way. We woke up on time with the sunshine, without even trying. Our dumb body clocks are getting into a bad habit of waking up at 6:30 or before. I heard Kenny pick up his phone and moan… it was 6:29. The dingalingalarm went off one minute later. Obviously I was already awake too. 😵💫 Time to get after it. We were on the west side of the lake, so as we tootled out of the marina basin to the lake, we were treated to a beautiful sunrise.
Our voyage was pretty uneventful as we meandered up the lake. “Up” the lake is actually South, which is one of those wierdnesses that is hard to grasp. I’m always saying it backwards. The lake was fairly wide, but there was still a channel to follow, which is the original river bed route. Up ahead we could see a bridge to nowhere.
And beyond it, an old abandoned building that was lost when the dam was built and the Tennessee River turned into the Kentucky Lake.
The air temperature was just on the edge of being chilly…. so one of us took their fuzzy off, and one left their fuzzy on. 🙋♀️
The Kentucky Lake is really beautiful, with lots of little islands popped up around everywhere. The water is a green/brown color… nothing special, although there was very little debris or logs to dodge. YAY!
HA! I was perusing facebook and saw this. It made me think of our oldest daughter. She loves her coffee! Some of y’all might be able to relate.
As we tootled along, we came upon another looper boat named Perfect Choice. We had crossed paths with them somewhere else, and if a boat is on Nebo, I’ll take their picture and send it to them. Well today, they took our picture and sent it to us! YAY!
This railroad bridge was plenty tall enough for us, but there was a sailboat pacing and waiting for it to lift. In the meantime, a very long train came along. I’m glad we didn’t need it opened. I like these kind with the big giant pulleys on top to lift the center piece straight up.
The scenery was so pretty when the sun was in the right spot. And the water was really nice and calm looking, although we were losing almost a mile per hour going up stream.
We arrived at Cuba Landing Marina before 2:00. I had talked to Paul at the marina yesterday, and he said they’re generally closed on Tuesdays, so just go to the fifth dock, and pull into any empty slip and then call him on the phone. The marina suffered major damage in a 2019 storm, but most of it has been rebuilt. Dock 4 was still a mess, so it’s obvious they aren’t done with the remodel. When we pulled into the marina basin, we saw that the doors to the store were open, so I wandered over and Paul was there. He was such a nice young man, and always referred to me as Ms. Stark. Our slip was $1.00/ft/nt including power. On my way back down our dock, I met some locals sitting at their dock table in the covered dock #5. They asked if I was a looper. When I said yes, they pulled out a chair and said ‘come sit a spell and tell us some stories’. So I did. 🙂
We saw Nine Lives come in after awhile and greeted them. They invited us over for dinner, so we happily accepted. They are trying to use up some food since they’ll be getting off of their boat and putting it into storage in just a couple of days. We had a really lovely evening with them. They have some great stories and are just so fun and make us laugh – a lot. It’s kind of strange to think that we may never ever see them, ever again. That’s kind of a sad thing with this looping lifestyle… we meet so many wonderful people, and sometimes really make great connections and see each other a few times along the way. Other people we fully intend on seeing again down the waterway somewhere, but most of the time, it just doesn’t happen. You don’t realize that when you say ‘have a good evening’ on the dock and everyone goes to their own boats, you’ll most likely never see each other again. It makes me think of this quote from Sandlot – my sons’ most favorite movie of all time.
Fortunately it isn’t ALWAYS that way. We have a handful of Looper friends that we stay in contact with and get together with when ever we can. We seek them out on our cross country road trips and invite ourselves over. We find them when they winter in Florida and we meet for Spring Training baseball games and other fun. We have Thanksgiving dinner with them. We keep track of them on Nebo and send a note every once in awhile. We have dear friends that we wouldn’t have if we’d never looped. And my prayer is always that with this lifestyle we’ve been blessed with, that I share God’s love through joy, kindness, a smile and hopefully some laughter with everyone I meet. Perhaps that I why I am exactly where I am, so that I can do that. 🥰