Nothing to See Here

This morning we planned to leave at sun up.  According to the forecast we figured it would be foggy and it was.  It would get better and worse as we sat there in the anchorage.  We could tell it was worse out on the main channel, but at 7:00 a.m. we decided to go for it.  We would turn around and come back into the anchorage if it was too bad.  We were planning on another long day so we wanted to get going if we could.  We announced ourselves getting underway and heard no reply on the VHF radio.  Visibility was about an eighth of a mile, so we navigated by GPS and radar knowing we would be able to see if something was directly in front of us.  It took about two hours to completely dissipate today although there were places that were clear at times in between.

This was one spot where it was clear for a while but then we entered more fog.

Approaching the town of Guntersville the fog lifted for the remainder of the day.  While it was foggy though we were unable to observe the continued progress of rebuilding from the tornadoes from several years back.  What we were able to see though, there are some really nice, large houses that have been built along a path that one of them took.  I guess the developer took advantage of the land already being cleared.



We thought we were going to time our arrival to Guntersville Lock just right as we heard an up bound pleasure craft approaching it ahead of us.  That would mean the water in the chamber would be up and ready for us to lock down.  Unfortunately just about the time we would arrive another up bound pleasure was going to reach the lock also.  When that pleasure craft called, the Lock Master instructed him to go to the auxiliary chamber.  We thought that meant maybe he would go up in that chamber while we went down in the main chamber.  No such luck.  We were instructed to wait for that vessel to exit the auxiliary chamber and then it would be our turn.  So we had to wait about a half an hour.  Just about the time it was our turn though, the Lock Master switched us to the main chamber because there was an up bound tow coming next.  Therefore we ended up locking down today at almost the exact time we did yesterday.
We were out of Guntersville Lock at about 11:45 a.m. and almost immediately passed the tow "Joe Cain".  We tried calling it on the VHF radio to find out which side to pass but got no response.
The rest of the travel day was pretty uneventful, passing more pleasure boats presumably going up to Chattanooga or beyond, and one more tow, "Winchester".
We arrived at Decatur, Alabama's free dock shortly after 5:00 p.m. after 74 miles of travel in just over ten hours. We were both hungry so we almost immediately got our bicycles ready and peddled to Mellow Mushroom for dinner.  Have to say the quality there was much better than the downtown Chattanooga location was all summer.  I think we finally got the shortest/best bicycle route figured out now.  We always seemed to take the long way there and the short way back.