Columbus Mississippi (Port #39) ; Oct 30/31

The ride from Fulton to Columbus was fairly uneventful, but a long day gettin’ thru locks.
60 miles / 4 Locks / 9.5 hours.
The ride down the Tenn-Tom was pleasurable, with low traffic and small barges,

In the first lock we met a couple on a 49 ft Meridian boat from metro Detroit.
The vessel “Grayling” was crewed by Bob & Jeanne from Northville Michigan.
Grayling led the day thru the locks and around blind corners with their AIS system.
The first & second locks (Fulton Lock & Glover Wilkens Lock) were quick in/outs.
The third lock (Amory) was about a 2 hour wait for a barge, then 5 slower sailboats.
The forth lock (Aberdeen Lock) was very quick with only Grayling & Gettin’ Looped thru the lock.

We arrived at Columbus Marina about 5:30pm and were tied up and powered just before dusk.

On our way into Columbus Marina, we were greeted by the local welcoming party Byron, a Gold Looper from 2014/2015. We did not know Byron, but apparently he takes photos of all the Loopers arriving at Columbus and shares the photos.

We went to dinner with Bob/Jeanne, who we had just met during the day.
They are an interesting couple, both are UofM grads.

Bob was a lawyer by trade, worked for the city of Detroit, worked for a company that specializes in training companies on the ISO14000 Quality Standards, and has written 3 supernatural horror books, the most popular being “Crooked Tree”.
You can Google him via “Robert C Wilson, Crooked Tree”
Jeanne has her PHD in Biology, but due to a scarce market for people with this background, she has become an IT specialist, making double of what she was making as a biologist.
In spite of living in Northville, they have spent a lot of their life in Grayling Michigan, and named their boat “Grayling”.
They are on a similar schedule as us, having left Michigan this past summer, but they have much more experience than us, having spent about 2 months in Florida & the Bahamas, when they purchased the boat in Florida in 2014.
Jonell thinks that Bob, minus the white beard, looks like my dad James Murphree – what do y’all who know Jimmy think ?

Today, July 31st is Halloween.
Completely forgot about it, we tend to lose track of the days of the week or holidays while Looping (Dave Hinman knows this fact).
We were reminded by 2 young trick or treaters in the marina this afternoon.
Luckily, Mike keeps a lot of candy on board, and Kenny/Carla left a bag.

The youngsters were treated to Reeses Cups, Twix candy bars, and M/M packets.

In spite of not knowing what day it is, we have been able to keep up with the World Series via the internet & Fox Sports Go.

Games #2 & #5 were two of the most exciting World Series games I think I have ever seen.

Game #6  – We were hoping that Justin Verlander would have won it all for Houston Tuesday, oh well didn’t win but pitched very well again.

Game #7 tonight – Go Astros !
Oops , just heard from another Looper couple that we missed it
Congrats Houston !