Gulf of Mexico or Bust!

So where did I leave off? Florence, that was it.
We woke up yesterday (Nov 7) morning to cold and foggy. Very foggy.

Okay, so the picture doesn't convey the thickness of the fog. But it was really foggy. And it's a nifty pic, right?
So we waited around a while for the fog to burn off. I think we left a little after 8:30 (time change helped us out there). Then we were booking it down river! The GPS clocked us at 7 mph. Whoa! Watch out, world, this sailboat's got rockets! Other than the high speed early in the day, it was pretty uneventful. "Uneventful" is great for cruising, but not so much for people reading about it. The weather warmed up a bit, the wind died a bit. Overall, nice.
We made our way down Pickwick Lake toward Yellow Creek, which is where the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway (Tenn-Tom, for boaters in the know [yes, of course we're in-the-know boaters, c'mon people]) joins up with the Tennessee River. As we got close to the creek, I saw a trawler coming toward us. It had a blue hull, so I knew it wasn't my parents. But there was a white speck coming toward us, too, and that could be them! But the speck stayed a speck for a long time. Then it looked more like a boat. A trawler! A white one with a stripe!! Towing a dingy!!! When Trevor said "Did somebody just wave from that boat?", I got on the VHF and called out "Off Our Rocker, this is Earendil. Is that you?" And it was! We met my parents right at the mouth of Yellow Creek. How cool is that?
So we anchored together for the night, had some supper, did some chatting, looked at pictures, looked at each others' boats. But boy was it cold when we went to bed! Brr! Trevor tossed the sleeping bag on the bed. Excellent idea! We were warm until it was time to get up. Then it was cold again! And condensation everywhere! (You can tell the adventures from last week have worn off, since the condensation gets an exclamation point.)
But the day warmed up quickly. Gorgeous day! We parked the boat at Aqua Yacht Harbor and went grocery shopping. Bought a bigger cooler. Trevor needs orange juice, and I need milk. And we both want sandwiches. (Butter is nice to have, too. Mac & Cheese isn't the same without butter.) Over the last week, we've realized some of the things we don't want to live without. Now we have apples and oranges, too. Awesome!
Had dinner with the parents tonight. They made burgers, and we made mac & cheese (with butter, oh yeah!). Delicious and nutritious. Well, it was delicious, anyway. Then showers (yay!). And now Trevor is doing laundry. Have I mentioned how ridiculously awesome he is? Seriously, so awesome!
Tomorrow, we're finally heading south. We'll be going down a really ugly part of the Tenn-Tom. I'll post pictures of the ugly for you. So you can feel sorry for us. Ha!
But to make up for tomorrow's ugly, I'll post pictures of pretty first!





That picture on the left is fog in Florence (fog always makes good pictures). The right one is the fall colors somewhere (everywhere?) in Pickwick Lake. The last on is a gorgeous (post-card worthy) inlet just before we got to Yellow Creek. Pretty much all of the inlets as we approached the creek were that awesome. One even had a waterfall!
And finally, us!