Tenn-Tom Scooter Adventure

 A while ago I found on the Internet what I thought was a nice marina with cabins and a restaurant located on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway (commonly referred to as the Tenn-Tom).  Oh, that might be a nice get-away for us!  Today we decided to ride the scooters up to the marina and check it out.  You can read more about the Tenn-Tom here.  The Tenn-Tom is a 234-mile (377 km) man-made U.S. waterway built in the 20th century from the Tennessee River to the junction of the Black Warrior-Tombigbee River system near Demopolis, Alabama. The Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway links commercial navigation from the nation's midsection to the Gulf of Mexico.

Our plan was to leave fairly early and catch breakfast at a nearby restaurant and then go find this marina.  Best laid plans and all.... We woke up to temperatures in the 50's.  Ummmmmm, new plan!  We decided to have lunch at home and then take off on the scooters.  By the time we left the house, around 1:15 pm or so, it was in the high seventies and mesh gear was the order of the day.  Had we left at the original time I would have been wearing my heated jacket, lol!  Mesh was a good choice as the temperature hit 80 later in the day.

No surprise, we took the Natchez Trace Parkway heading north.  Maybe 35 miles later we took an exit that would eventually lead to our destination, Midway Marina.  We rode a pleasant two lane rural highway for about 20 miles and then turned onto a country lane.  Oh boy, that country lane was spectacular!  Full of pot holes and rough pavement with a gravel section thrown in for good measure.

I really enjoyed this road.  Zero traffic, a few homes and lots of enchantment!  This is slow adventuring and I love it!  After a few miles of zen scootering we found the Midway Marina.  Hmmmmm, not nearly as pleasant looking as their website portrays.  A bit run down and in need of some TLC.  We explored the marina on the scooters.

There are two swimming areas.  This is a pond with dock and swimming platform.  They also launch golf balls from the shoreline.  You can barely see the 100, 200 and 300 yard signs out in the distance.  Now that was fun, hahahahaha!

There is boat gas and a small store.

A permanent houseboat resident.

Guy's Place - the restaurant.  We didn't check out the restaurant but their online menu looks good!

Outside dining option on the river!

The cabins, all three of them, were awesome!  Here is a front view.

Back view with a nice porch overlooking the river.

And a shared outdoor fireplace.  Very nice!

It does appear they are working hard to upgrade the marina and make it into a real resort.  It's just not quite there yet.  This is the river beach for swimming.  They also had a volleyball or badminton sand court.

Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed in the marina and probably won't spend the $155 per night to stay in a cabin (two nights required on a weekend).  I imagine if you had a boat this would be a great place to stay.  Go out on the river all day and then retire to the lovely cabins and maybe stroll over to Guy's Place for a pleasant meal.  Yeah, we're scooterers not boaters, lol!

After perusing the marina we mounted our mighty steeds and rode the remainder of the country lane back to the rural highway.  On our way to the marina we spotted several boat locks and decided to take a stop at one and see what was there.  We were pleasantly surprised when we turned onto the road that leads to G.V. "Sonny" Montgomery Lock!

If you've been paying attention and actually clicked on the Tenn-Tom link provided above, you would know that there are a series of locks along the Tenn-Tom.  Every time we cross the Tenn-Tom we always look for barges.  I'd love to see a long barge going through the locks!

This is the view from the other direction of the locks.  We found a really sweet park at the foot of the locks with restrooms and grassy area along with parking.  Just wish they had a picnic table!  A beautiful place to stop.

Nothing really to say.  Just enjoy the quiet, solitude, water and engineering marvel.

You can see what a beautiful day it was!  Sunshine and 80 degrees.  Perfect!  After the visit to locks we tootled on down the rural highway to the Natchez Trace Parkway.  From there it's an easy, peasy ride home.  We did take a moment to enjoy a pull-out along the Trace.

This is Donivan Slough and has a small nature walk.

And that was that!  Twenty minutes and 112 miles later we were pulling into the driveway.  It was a delightful diversion and lovely scooter adventure.  I'm getting 84.5 mpg and Eric is getting about 77 mpg.  Such fun little scooters.  Puts me in a happy place.  Oh!  I forgot to tell you on our initial ride up the Trace we actually passed someone!  HA!  That doesn't happen on a scooter, made me laugh out loud 😂

Stay tuned because we having something interesting planned for tomorrow!

Cheers,

Cletha