Cabin on the Lake Stop

We left Memphis on the morning of day 8 of the Down South Loop. It was a beautiful morning, which was welcome after the weather of the night before.

If you recall from the last post, when we pulled into Memphis we saw rain in the forecasts (we look at 3 weather apps to see if there is agreement about the forecast) for Saturday. We told Andy, at the marina office, that we would probably be staying two nights. He was also able to put us in a covered slip.

The rain held off most of Saturday. It was very windy but no rain. That changed about 8:30. Some rather thunderous storms passed over the top of the Memphis Yacth Club, where we were hunkered down. We were under two different tornado warnings that evening. Both were short lived and the actual tornado was several miles north of us. By 9:30 the worst of it was over a,nd we had light rain for a couple of more hours. We were glad to see the sun peeking out Sunday morning.

The goal for today is to reach Bob’s cabin on Desoto Lake, which is right off the Mississippi River. Charlie has been to Bob’s cabin a couple of times, so he thinks he will be able to recognize it from the water. We looked at Google Earth and he was able to pick it out, well he is pretty sure that’s it, well maybe 60% sure. Maybe if we get there we can FaceTime Bob, if you are not sure. He doesn’t do FaceTime, Charlie says. Well we just do the next best thing: If you get lost you just gotta pull in somewhere and ask directions. Right, Captain Ron?

The trip to Bob’s went well. We had good current all day. With the push of the current we were able to maintain 18 to 20 MPH for most of the trip. We passed the casinos at Tunica, MS a few hours into the trip. It was eerie to see empty parking lots around the casinos.

The tow/barge combos are getting larger as we go down river. The largest we have seen so far is 35 barges (5 wide and 7 long). I have a feeling this not the largest set we will see.

The only other town we passed today was Helena, AR which gave us Harold Lloyd Jenkins (a.k.a. Conway Twitty) and the longest running daily radio program, King Biscuit Time. There is no city dock, so will have to take a rain check on the Sundial Museum (and that would not be proper social distancing, so maybe next time).

As we approach mile 625, we begin to look for the narrow entrance into Desoto Lake. Charlie remembered it as being a very narrow channel. Because of the flooding, it was no longer a narrow channel, but the gap in the trees was surely it. Thank goodness we had the course plugged into the iPad to confirm our guess.