Today was a long trip - 85 miles. It was a beautiful day on the meandering river. On the shores were occasional fish camps and power plants, paper mills, and gravel operations. As we came to our first lock on the river, we met up with 3 other boats from Alabama/MS who were traveling north to home. They were helpful with information about the places to stay as we traveled further north. The locks along this portion of the trip seem to be all bollard locks. What that means is they have a bollard to tie-up to when you are in the lock. The bollard is on a floating tank and is set within tracks in the lock wall. As the water rises (or falls) the tank /bollard moves with the water level. On the other locks we've been in, you've had to grab lines that run vertically along the lock walls and they are secured at the top of the lock. You then have to hang on to the line and tighten/loosen your hold as you go up our down with the water level. The bollard locks are easier and seem to have less turbulence than the other locks.

After going through the lock, one of the other boaters and ourselves decided to settle in for the night at a rustic "marina" called Bobby's Fish Camp." The other boater got to the dock first and got settled and then helped us with our lines. Then the other boater went to the power pedestal to hook-up to electricity and got quite a shock. He then mentioned that when he touched our boat to help us with our lines, he got a shock too. Then we all experienced small shocks as we stood on the dock and touched our boats as we re-adjusted our lines. Everyone was reluctant to hook-up to the power and we were also concerned about what appeared to be a power leak in the water and didn't want it to hurt us or the electrical systems on the boats. So we both untied our lines and found anchorages in creeks. Our anchorage was another two hours away but since it was 4pm, we had lots of daylight still. We got to the creek around 6:30pm and found the creek to be very narrow with lots of tree limbs and bushes jutting out into the creek but it was very calm and we snuggled right into a spot and enjoyed listening to the birds and an occasional frog.