I am very excited for today. We will be headed into Memphis, TN . It’s time for laundry to be done and some good cleaning. We are thinking of renting a car and doing some exploring. Alton (18 days ago) was our last time in a marina so looking forward to stopping for a few days. Someone posted on Face book to beware of the gators. I looked it up on the mighty web only to find out that a large 727 pound gator and 13 feet was caught on the Mississippi River.  It did not say where.  Memphis does have gators, coyotes,bobcats.. Oh my..

It’s a good thing George doesn’t get off the boat.

We passed some interesting cliffs along the river.

Apparently helped along by rain erosion.  I don’t think the river gets that high.  But perhaps the lower part of the cliffs was undermined by flood waters in the spring.

We saw the Army Corp Of Engineers unloading a number of these large concrete slabs.  Perhaps to reinforce some dike somewhere.

Here are a number of barges waiting to get unloaded… Look at all those concrete slabs.  

This is officially largest number of barges we have seen connected to a tow.  It is 6 barges wide, 7 long and three more barges beside the tow.  Total of 45 barges.  This is longer than an aircraft carrier and nearly as wide.

This is a large tow pushing that many barges.  It has three huge engines.

I never though we would see 6 footers on the Mississippi but let me tell you the waves behind this vessels were huge.  The waves created by the tows are unusual.  They create relatively small diagonal waves compared to a power boat.  But their stern waves that travel directly back can be huge.  We hit the 6 footers created by this tow and it rocked us a bit.

We passed this other tow.  The captain was so friendly on the radio when we called.  And as we passed, waved exuberantly. The captain is the man in the orange who stepped out on deck to say hello to us… such nice people.

This looked so inviting but the current was to strong to make for a pleasant anchorage.

Someone planted the flag on this beach… God Bless America!

Here is our trip so far at www.trackmytour.com/35L17

This our anchorage last night. We are 10 miles up stream from Memphis.  It was a relatively calm anchorage off the channel

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