Joe Wheeler State Park/Marina and Grand Harbor Marina Visits (9/29 - 10/1/2018)

We leave Ditto Landing in Huntsville, AL on Saturday, September 29 and head for Joe Wheeler State Park Marina.  We are now half way home to where we began our Journey 2 months ago with our sights on traveling the entire Tennessee River.

We leave about 10:30, the weather is beautiful and 74 degrees.  The river is really muddy looking but not much debris in the water.  We see a yellow butterfly as we leave the slip at the marina as we have seen every day since we left on our trip August 10.  We consider seeing a yellow butterfly our good luck charm!!

This is the Hwy 231 bridge where I took the sunset picture last night!!  The skies are blue and today is going to be a perfect travel day for our 57 mile trip to Joe Wheeler Marina.

This railroad bridge in Decatur, AL is quite unique.  This bridge only has a vertical clearance of 9'8" so most every boat must call the "bridge tender" and ask he raise the bridge.  We had to wait about 10 minutes for a very long train to go over on the train tracks on the bridge.  After the train passes, the bridge starts to lift about 30' so we can pass under the bridge and continue our ride.

Approaching Bridge.  See how low it is.

The bridge is raised about 30 feet so we can pass under the bridge and continue our downstream trip

We NEVER got tired of seeing the beautiful skies, water and scenery along our journey

 We arrive at Joe Wheeler State Park Marina at 3:15PM and make our approach to our slip right behind the Lodge....which also has a gorgeous pool.....  We notice a Park Ranger waving us off saying we couldn't park our boat there.  We move to another slip and go talk with the Park Ranger to see what is going on.  He lets us know there is a wedding at 4:30 and the bride didn't want any boats in her wedding pictures......what.....she is getting married in a state park that has a marina attached to it and she doesn't want boats in her pictures....what was she thinking!!!

So we decide to go "float" in the Lake until after the wedding ceremony then we can come back and park wherever we want.  There were at least 10 more boats at the marina for the night and most of us left for about 2 hours then returned.  That's when the music got loud, the dancing got crazy and the "party got started"!!!  We parked Cloud Nine front and center of where the ceremony was held....see the seats and our boat in top right!!

Cloud Nine parked in the center of the wedding ceremony!!

Picture taken from Cloud Nine looking at Joe Wheeler State Park and Wedding Party!!

Sunset Starting as we leave the Lake Headed for the Wedding Party!!

Gorgeous Sunset at Joe Wheeler State Park and Marina

The DJ music ends by 9PM and the wedding party breaks up by 10PM.  It was a fun night for all of us in our boats and we presume the wedding attendees had a good time too.....but all we did know was we had so much fun on Saturday, we'd stay another day and have a "pool day".

We thoroughly enjoyed our time at Joe Wheeler State Park and Marina, but it was time to move along down the river and see what adventure we can get into next!!

Monday, October 1
Monday morning, October 1, we headed for the "tri-state" marina in TN/AL/MS called Grand Harbor Marina.  The marina itself is in TN but when you step off the dock, you're in MS!!  We left Monday morning by 8:15 because we had 2 Locks to go through plus 62 miles to Grand Harbor Marina -- so we knew we'd have a long day.  Wheeler Lock was within 2 miles of Joe Wheeler Marina.  I called the Lockmaster and he said to come on down.....we did to find out we had a 1-1/2 hour wait.  This particular Lockmaster refused to tell me a barge was coming until we got to the "arrival point" which is within 500 yards of the Lock.  Needless to say, he was not my favorite Lockmaster.....geez - just tell me before we leave the marina that we will have an hour wait.  We finally get through that lock and Wilson Lock is only 18 miles away.  I call that Lockmaster and he is nice enough to tell us we will have about a 2 hour wait because there are 3 barges for him to lock through before he could let us through.  At least we knew we had a wait -- so we decided to take a side trip to a marina near Wilson Lock and fuel up.  That would take about an hour and we needed fuel anyway before we completed our 62 mile trip that day.  There are some incredible homes on Wilson Lake.

Wilson Lock is the largest lock on the TN River.  Once inside the Lock, it lowers us 93' into Pickwick Lake.  These are pictures of the inside of the lock.

Looking to the top of the Lock from inside Cloud Nine.  That's tall......

Leaving Wilson Lock

As we leave Wilson Lock into Pickwick Lake, we see this cute graffiti painted on the bridge.

We now have about 45 miles to get to our next marina, but we are done with Locks that have delayed us today.  It should be smooth sailing now......except for the massive storms we soon see approaching the River.

Big Storms ahead of us

Oh my, really bad storms ahead of us.  

We put all our covers up so we can stay pretty dry....we wait and watch hoping to not get drenched by the storms.  Somehow, we were able to avoid getting wet.  It was a few scary moments, but we dodged another storm....we are 2 lucky folks.....

Then we see the most beautiful double rainbow.  It was so big, we could not capture the entire rainbow into 1 picture!!

As quickly as the clouds and storms arrived, the skies separated just as fast and the sun was shining 

We arrived at Grand Harbor Marina at 6:15PM.  Time for another sunset picture, and a quiet evening before leaving again on Tuesday.

These 3 days were amazing.  Everything from a Wedding, Pool Day, 2 Locks, Storms, Rainbows and reaching the 3-state triangle of TN/MS/AL, this 120 mile trip was both memorable and beautiful.

Tomorrow we will take another side trip down the Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway.

Love my Captain......Love Cloud Nine.....