The Butter is Getting Hard

Our special waitress with her chief cook

We spent our 3 weeks ashore & now we’re getting antsy to get back on the water.  We took care of personal matters in Chattanooga and in New Orleans, which all turned out well.  The Executive Summary:

We owe another huge debt of gratitude to our very good friends in Chattanooga, John & Susan.  Their hospitality in sharing their home with us was definitely “above and beyond”.  They recently enjoyed their own cruise, taking their boat down the TN River and the TennTom to Mobile AL.

We enjoyed our two short visits to New Orleans, and our visits to our son & his family.  We thoroughly spoiled our granddaughter before returning her to her parents as we were leaving town.

Back in TN, we got to visit our special boating buddies, Leigh and Clint, for a couple days.  We find that they may be planning to take their big new yacht all the way south to Key West.  Yes, we’re jealous.

With our niece's two sons in front of Monticello.
I want my picture on the back of all the nickels!

When we initially left Colonial Beach, we noted that our southbound trek took us right through Charlottesville VA, so we decided to act like tourists and stop to visit Jefferson’s Monticello, as well as James Monroe’s Ashlawn-Highland (located adjacent to Monticello).  For your history trivia for today, you should know that Jefferson was the mentor for both James Madison (4^th President) and James Monroe (5^th President).  Since each of the 3 served 8 years as President, Jefferson’s Republican policies and beliefs became infused in the new country’s government and Congress.

Shenandoah Mountains, about 3300' MSL.  We'll
stay at Mean Sea Level for the next month.

As we finally drove back to our boat on the Potomac River, we saw that the tree leaves had started to change to their fall colors.  We took a small detour from the interstate highway to drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway through the Shenandoah Mountains.  The mountains all in color were impressive, especially since we’ll be right at sea level for the next couple weeks.

I heard several years ago another boater describe how he determines when to head north for the spring, or to head south for the winter.  He puts a stick of butter on a dish on his boat.  If the butter gets too soft, he heads north.  If the butter gets too hard, he heads south.  Our butter is getting too hard.