on to the Rendezvous 10-12-2014

Monday. October 13, 2014

On to the Rendezvous!

A busy day was ahead for us.  Tim needed to visit his friends at the ship’s store to score some new fuel filters, we needed to take a trip back to Corinth to pick up our rental car (Enterprise was not open on Sunday), return to Aqua Marina to drop the courtesy car off. And we needed to high tail it to Joe Wheeler State Park, some 75 miles away to register for the week’s activities.

On the way to Joe Wheeler State Park, we passed several landmarks. One included the Coon Dog Cemetery, where over 150 coon dogs from all over the United States are buried.  In order to have your coon dog buried here, the owner must claim their dog to be an authentic coon dog, a witness needs to declare the deceased is a coon dog, and a member of the Key Underwood Coon Dog Memorial Graveyard, Inc. must be allowed to view the coon hound and declare it as such.  To read more, click here.

The countryside is beautiful, and we wended our way to the park.  It was interesting to note that there are gracious homes next to ramshackle trailer homes. Most of the road was a two lane highway. 

As we neared the park, we needed to drive over the Wheeler lock and dam to cross the Tennessee River. While Kathy has gotten used to going under bridges, and through locks (kind of), driving over the lock and dam was a daunting experience! As we approached the bridge, the highway appeared to simply end. But we forged on.  Sure enough, there was the biggest dam bridge she had ever encountered.

 Knowing full well that leaning heavily away from the passenger side door would NOT have an impact on keeping the car on the bridge, she did so anyway.  Yikes.

 

Joe Wheeler Lock

We made it to the park, registered, caught up with old friends, took part in the vendor sponsored wine and beer reception, and had a huge dinner.  Then we headed back to our poor boat…across the bridge, past the Coon Dog Cemetery.

Oh, we forgot to mention the tornado warnings and driving rain.  At least three times in the course of the evening the program was interrupted by cell phones signaling weather alerts, and the emcee making tornado warning announcements.  Folks scattered to their boats to batten down their hatches, gather up their dogs and take them into the lodge. 

At the end of the evening, about 9:30 PM, we gathered our belongings, and headed to our rental Ford Focus for the harrowing drive home. The two lane road seemed much narrower than we had remembered from the morning, but the saving grace was that the states of Mississippi and Alabama have installed reflectors along the center line…something that would last about 4 minutes when attacked by a Minnesota snowplow.

But Tim did an excellent job of driving home to Sea Fever. And, as we seem to end all of these posts, we got ready and went to bed.