Tuesday, October 5, 2021
Temp: 80/65, Humidity: 70/100%, Top Wind: NE9 mph, Precip: clouds, mostly sun! THEN ⚡️⛈ after dark, Miles Traveled: just a few to town in a loaner car
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When I got up this morning, I was surprised that I had not heard any rain yet. Today was forecasted to be 100% chance of rain for most of the day, and that’s why we planned to stay here today. It was quite pleasant looking outside. WHAT?! I checked the forecast, and it was way better than when we went to bed last night. Great. Did we just waste one whole perfectly good travel day? Geeze.
Hey look! It’s STOboh! She is a twin to our friends on Hallelujah! … a Carver 466. They are beautiful boats, and HUGE inside!
Our mechanic showed up today and replaced the thermostat on Laverne. This is what happens to the guest berth when that kind of thing needs to happen. Removable walls are a nice engine room feature.
When a thermostat change happens, we need to drain a couple of gallons of water/antifreeze out of the engine. Mechanic does that into an oblong bucket that has a pour spout so that it’s easier to pour back through a funnel to put back into the engine. We did all that, but our poor little bucket cracked in a couple of places in the process. 😬. So when we were all done with that, we figured it was a good time to make a run to Lowe’s with the loaner car to get a new bucket. There are two vehicles here, so we grabbed the mini van. I’m not sure ALL of the warning lights were on, but there were several. Such is the life of a loaner car.
The marina is a couple of miles out of town, so we got to see a little bit of scenery on the way.
Columbus is a United States Air Force Base town.
We found Lowe’s and got us a new bucket and a couple other items. And look at this! We in the South, y’all! You can buy yourself a go-getter from Lowe’s for under $10,000!
One of my sons noticed that we are near STARKville, so I really wanted to take a selfie with a sign. But Kenny didn’t think it was a good idea for me to leap out of the car at this point as we were in traffic moving along the highway.
As planned, we had a party of nine go out to dinner, so we took both loaner vehicles. The sky got really dark and we made it to dinner before the rain started. We went to a place called Huck’s, which had a good cajun menu. We finally got to visit with David and Lisa of STOboh. They bought their boat on a huge lake in Georgia, had it disassembled, trucked to St Petersburg Florida, and reassembled! DUDE! They started their loop from there, so they are almost done too. They are a little nervous about anchoring and making the Gulf crossing, so they asked if they can travel with us, which is fine. They are fun, nice peeps.
The restaurant was pretty busy, but one of our gals had made a reservation for us, so we were seated upstairs on a long table. It was a good meal and we had a fun time.
Here we are!
And while we were enjoying our meal and visiting, the outside was having its own party!! A huge thunderstorm came over and it was pouring lions & wolves…which is much harder than cats & dogs! The lightning was like a strobe light! OK – so the forecasted rain finally showed up. I just hope it works itself out tonight and that tomorrow will be good for travel as planned. As I write this, I wonder, 🤔 where did the whole “raining cats & dogs” come from? I looked. 🙀🐶 Nobody knows, (not even the Google or Wikipedia!!) but it has documented use since at least 1651 to describe heavy rain. So, there’s a history lesson for you, since I’ve been a little lax on that lately.
As far as we know, its just us and STOboh that are leaving tomorrow. David said he’d telephone the lock at 6am to get the status, and let us know. Hopefully we can peel out around 7:00. In the meantime, we hunkered down and made sure every window was tightly closed!!
Tomorrow’s forecast says it will be a little cooler and very little chance of rain. 👍 It will be humid, and I expect there will be debris in the river to dodge, since there are flash flood warnings tonight. We’ll be anchoring in a spot where we did before, which is nice and safe in a little pond off of the river. David & Lisa have only anchored once on this whole loop, because he drives like a B.O.H. so they go far distances to avoid it. But you’d have to go over 130 miles and through three locks to do that here, and that isn’t really feasible in the amount of daylight we have. So, they’ll follow us and get their anchor wet again. Stay tuned!….