The joy of a working toilet! and have a Coke and a smile....

Sometimes it's all about the simple things in life..  We have stayed in one place here in Iuka Mississippi for 3 days.  This will be our third night.  All of this because a delayed package had not arrived before us.  

You see when you're on a boat full time you are captain janitor and plumber.   One of our toilets decided to run over and over and over again.  It wouldn't build vacuum.  I have parts to fix what is typically broken and did so in the toilet ended up worse.  Then I ordered another part to solve the problem and it didn't arrive before we got here.   We waited 3 days...  There were lots of things to do here so we could restock the boat and enjoy some time visiting the local sites.  

Tomorrow we take to the rivers again.  Have left the Tennessee River and will now proceed down the Tombigbee waterway and then some rivers to get to Mobile Alabama.  We have 12 locks to go.  They called them the dirty dozen.   There is not much in this stretch other than riverbends and swamps and some cliffs.  Not much for towns... 

Will probably do some anchoring and maybe visit a marina if there's one where we need to stop.   

Today we spent some time in Corinth Mississippi.    As Mississippi towns go it's a fairly good sized town.  That said it wouldn't be a suburb in most cities.  

The first thing we did in Corinth is visit the Coca-Cola museum.  We realize the big Coca-Cola museum is near headquarters in Atlanta.  The Coca-Cola museum here in Corinth is at one of the original bottlers that made Coca-Cola for a three-state region.  And it's still one of the few that is privately held by the same family that founded it in 1907.   

We walked into the museum and took some pictures and the person who greeted us from behind the counter was an elderly old man.  We figured he was an elderly volunteer and started talking with him.  It turns out he is the grandson of the founder and literally the patriarch of the organization who just really enjoys talking to people about Coca-Cola and the town.  He gave us all kinds of amazing history of the organization as well as the town because their family dates back here it's a long before the civil war.  

He even gave us some Coca-Cola glasses and served us up Coke floats for nothing.  Just a nice guy who really wanted to promote his business and town.

He gave us some brochures to go on a 1 mi walk and see 66 different historical sites.  Well I'm not generally a civil war buff it was very interesting to see why this town was so critical in the civil war.  This town is where the north south and the east-west railroads crossed.  In fact the town used to be called Cross Mississippi.  Besides the railroads this town also lies near the Tennessee River so it was the perfect supply route both on land and water to cut off when the union army decided to stop the south on the western front.  

I didn't take many pictures of the old buildings.  Most of them were buildings that were either old churches or were torn down in order to build munitions or housing for troops and then later converted to houses.  Some of them are beautiful old buildings though.

Like I said we restocked some things and walked around town and visited some unique restaurants and an old fashioned soda place. 

We went back to our marina mid-afternoon when our shipment came in.  I was able to do some necessary repairs and get a functioning system... Well at least mostly functioning looks like I have some additional surgery to do.   I have the parts for that too but we'll see...

Finally we went back to Corinth in the evening to return rental car and then later another trip to sit out at the top of the city in a rooftop restaurant and look at the town with the Christmas lights.

we sat with a fire and enjoyed our time of conversation and listening to music.  

Fun times with fellow Michigan boat friends on land.