Day #4 Land between Three States

After seeing my first "published blog" I know why they chose to call them blogs... I carefully formatted and spaced my entry only to have it come out as a BLOB of words... Oh well, no critical writing editors (Barker P.) may say anything! We started Day #4 early (7am) and chilly (43') and very Foggy! After the fog burned off (I have some pictures of our boat floating on clouds that will be posted eventually!)we had a beautiful day floating among a floatilla of other Loopers, most of whom we had met in our marinas. The trip was great and all 13 of us river travellers (and one bass fishing boat) joined up and locked thru the Pickwick Dam lock. It took over an hour... but hey, there was someone blasting his Best of the '50's playlist and it was sunny and quite relaxing! During our lazy drive on the river, most all of the big boats decided to stop their idle speed and blow out their engines (Flexing!) Well, Miss Zealous Cleaner was dusting around the lower helm (David favors the Flying Bridge) one engine quit... Of course we were in the middle of said floatilla and a bit awkward as the following boats come quickly up on our stern... So, I called David on the trusty walkie-talkie and said,"I think I may have accidently switched off a switch!" Sure enough, it was like the key to the car's ignigtion which I "switched" which caused our engine FAILURE! After some panicking on David's part and quick thinking on my part (Hey, David look at the switches I cleaned around) the engines were re-started. Another great dry run for what-would-you-do-if-it-REALLY-happened! We all arrived at our marinas, ours is Safe Harbor Aqua in Iuka, Mississippi and our friends are in Grand Harbor Marina in Counce, Tennessee and somewhere between us are the Alabama/Tennessee/Mississippi state lines! Our Tn Friends picked us up in their courtesy marina vehicle to join them for dinner, this is all in about a 5 mile radius! Today, we did pass by the Shiloh Battlefield and did some reading about the battle. It is strange to think that under Gen. U.S. Grant,the Union armies and NAVY travelled down these same rivers and engaged the fighting Tennesseen and Mississippian Conf. troops. Some day, I hope to return by car and visit this site of such loss, 24,000 casualities, and spend time with the site in respect of all the passionate Americans that fought.