Second Trip to the Boat

We're Getting Closer

It was the middle of November, work had slowed to a snail's pace and our cold winter (at least for Tennessee) had begun to set in on us. One glance at the weather around the country told me that Florida was a better place to be. So my son, Jeff, and I hit the road.





This time we didn't take a truck full of items, but just a small car with some stuff that I had deemed "necessaries". We stayed about four days on the boat and I was able to start puttering. This is how I do some of my best work. If I do a small project or two, take a break, have a beer, start surveying the situation, get up and attack another idea, before long I look around and have accomplished quite a bit.

This time we added cooking on the boat to our list of things to do. Cheaper than take-out or restaurant fare, cooking on the boat forced me to use the facilities and learn what I had brought that I didn't need as well as what I might have overlooked. I kept a list as I performed these culinary functions and after the last meal had been digested, found that I had forgotten a couple of very important items: more beer and a corkscrew! All joking aside, we had done pretty well on our last trip and the five page list I had compiled had proven to be quit thorough.

As the time of year had gone from warm to cold, I realized that I was going to have to close in some of the outdoor living areas of the boat, namely the bridge and the patio deck, or else we were going to be pretty uncomfortable as we entered the northern waters above Mobile Bay. I contacted Ricco at GDS Canvas in Ft. Lauderdale (954) 410-6575. You don't want to know what it costs to have a boat closed in. However, they did a beautiful job. With the greenhouse effect supplemented with a couple of inexpensive Coleman lanterns running during the day, I think we can keep ourselves warm enough to survive the trip.The river boat "Mary" on the Chattahoochee River, Florida. These types of paddle wheeler river boats plied the rivers of the south. The Mary was circa 1900.

The next part of our trip was was to head to Pensacola, Florida to pick up my wife Marci and my mother from the airport there. This drive up and then west across Florida's panhandle was a sight that I have never seen before. Jeff and I got off the main highway a couple of times and took some older highways. You can see what Florida must have been like a hundred years ago, with the old commercial looking buildings built up on piers to guard against the regular flooding before the dams and flood control. I managed a couple of "looks" from Jeff, when I would say, "Did you hear banjo music"? We had a great trip and saw some interesting country.

Then on to Gulf Shores, Alabama where for the past two years, our extended family has spent the Thanksgiving holiday. It has been a considerably warmer way to celebrate, due to the rather cold winters we have been experiencing in Tennessee. That ended the second trip to the boat.