On our way again after what turned out to be a relaxing interlude. We know we have a load of Loopers somewhere down the river, "ahead" of us (yes there's a joke in there somewhere). Not sure if that's a good or bad thing. I'm sure we'll hear from the lockmasters and dockmasters ahead as we make our way down the river.
This also marks a significant part of the trip down the "western rivers" as we complete our cruise of the Tennessee River system at Lake Pickwick and enter the Tennessee-Tombigbee. We will cruise the entire length of the Tenn-Tom to Demopolis, Alabama then transiting the entire length of the Lower Black Warrior River to Mobile and the Gulf of Mexico.
The Tenn-Tom differs from the Tennessee as it is managed by the US Corps of Engineers (USACE) as opposed to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Because the topography from the Great Smokey Mountains is so much more dramatic than this last segment which drops more slowly as the river flows to a delta at the Gulf. Locks on the Tennessee are 60-80 miles apart with drops of 40-60 feet and large reservoirs with anchorages and marinas aplenty. On the Tenn-Tom we find ourselves encountering up to 4 locks in a day to cruise 50 miles. Because much of the Tenn-Tom is an excavated channel (the earthwork completed to construct the Tenn-Tom was larger than the Panama Canal!) we need to coordinate our cruising activities more because there aren't always marinas between every lock and you're not allowed to anchor in the canals where commercial barges travel 24 hours/day. Arranging to get through locks and making the days destination has become much more of a planning effort and the daily cruise requires vigilant attention to watch for barges and steering through twisty oxbows so long we find ourselves frequently only a few hundred feet from where we were an hour ago!
