One last edition about what this trip is all about!

We cruised on Thursday into Aqua Harbor Marina hoping to find a way into Shiloh to visit the Civil War National Park. California Lady was at the marina, more new friends, and Nancy also was interested in a field trip.  We lucked out and the harbor master offered up a courtesy car, giving us 5 hours of time to become tourists so off the 3 of us went.  Nancy's husband had to stay back waiting for a repair man (also part of this journey-periodic repairs!!).  On our way, Nancy had a document to mail at a post office and our luck prevailed and my eagle eyes caught sight of a tiny post office for Shiloh that was only open until noon and it was 11:54!  Mission accomplished!

A sobering sight to see so many graves of Union soldiers that died miserable deaths in a 2 day span of the major battles that took place in Shiloh.  The Union soldiers were honored by being moved into proper graves by the US government.  The confederate sholdiers were left in the crude graves dug hastily by fellow soldiers.

Behind us is the Tennessee River, an area we cruised along weeks ago on our way to Joe Wheeler Park and the rendezvous.

Playing the tourist!  Experiencing the sight-seeing component of this looping adventure!  We lunched at Haug's Catfish Hotel which gave us a taste of  Tennessee home cooking.  We are in a corner where TN, AL and MS intersect, thus we keep hopping between states.  This was our last excursion into Tennessee so from now on, we will leave our home state in our wake and finally move beyond 2 hours (by car) from home :)

Being in a marina means more laundry, boat cleaning and also meeting up with fellow loopers so last night was fun as we all enjoyed ordering pizzas and eating dockside together.

Al always is the first one up and he took this yesterday morning from the marina.

This morning, several looper boats got an early start to their day. We however enjoyed our daily walk, filled the boat with water, recleaned decks that had an onslaught of weird green bug poop and ate yummy peach oatmeal that I made over night in the crock pot!

This is us an hour ago, entering the man made canal dug to connect the Tennessee River with the Black Warrior and the Tombigbee Rivers.  It is fondly called "the ditch" and has no place to stop along the way so we will simply cruise the 24 miles until the waterway opens into a wide body of water called Bay Springs Lake where we will anchor for the night.