Passing Through Our Final Lock

Day 188 |  Silas to Tensas River Anchorage  |  9.0 Hours  |  73 Miles  |  1 Lock  

Crossroads and Miss Utah pulled out of Bobby's Fish Camp at 6:30 for the short run down to the Coffeeville Lock. Thankfully, we entered right in and the doors shut quickly. We were all very cognizant of this lock's significance -- it was the final one on our trek through the inland rivers. The morning was gray and gloomy, but the crews of both boats were all smiles.

We encountered our first lock on June 11 back in Troy, NY, and have passed through a total of 102. We traversed a least one lock on 35 days. Our single-day record was 11, back on July 23 while in Canada on the Trent-Severn Waterway. We remembered back to our first Looper Rendezvous and initially hearing about the different types of locks -- cable, rope, floating bollard. The presenter was spouting out all kinds of warnings about floating bollards and how bad they were. I now say, give me a floating bollard any day. They are so easy. Pull in, attach one line to the midship cleat, catch up with important texts, untie, and be gone. Today's scenery was lacking. Eroded hillsides and downed trees were evidence of recent floods.

The highlights were bridges and industry. With those two things we had a good chance of having cell service. Our route was once again full of twisty switchbacks requiring a lot of travel, but yielding very little forward progress. We were surprised by the number of tows we encountered along the way and surmised that the Thanksgiving holiday had shifted more activity to Saturday.

The first photo below shows the dark band of the high water mark on tree trunks. The water has receded quite a bit. The Alabama River was docile today and very different from the raging torrents of a week ago. The rest of the day was spent looking at familiar sights: heron, relocated channel markers, and perfect reflections in the still water.

Although conditions were not ideal for bird photography, we spotted a pair of eagles in a tree and there were countless egrets skimming the water's surface. At 4:00 pulled into a great anchorage on the Tensas River and rafted up alongside Miss Utah for the evening. We got together for supper and stayed up too late chatting.

Our final moments were spent planning our homestretch run into Mobile tomorrow. We are now in brackish water and turn our planning focus from locks to tides. We're hoping some warmer weather will arrive as well.