Incommunicado

Our reactions to not being able to be on the internet at will amazes us.  We actually have withdrawal-like symptoms. We feel relieved that we are back......more or less.

Greetings from Charleville, France.  We have traveled down the Muese river from Liege, Belgium and despite a few glitches, we've had a lovely trip.  After Namur, Belgium, the commercial barge traffic thins out to practically nothing, the hills grow taller, the woods get thicker, the towns ooze with charm, the locks get friendlier and easier to negotiate. 
We are back to the kind of cruising that we remember.

The old fortifications in Namur, Belgium. A bagpiper's lament was drifting across the river as I took this picture.

Flower filled marina, Revin, France

Path to the charming but unisex shower room, Revin, France

Glitch number one: we are out of propane and cannot get our Netherlands' propane bottles refilled here.  France has a different system (of course) so we must travel to the next town to get an adapter and somehow find propane containers to fit inside our locker.  Oh well, excrement occurs, doesn't it?

Yogi with Adolphe Sax in Dinant, Belgium

M. Sax (of 'aphone fame) is very popular in Dinant.

Glitch number two: just as we crossed the French border, we were stopped, thoroughly inspected by the gendarmes and found lacking.  Our fire extinguisher wasn't dated and we do not have a throwable life ring aboard so we were written up although we were allowed to enter France on the condition that we rectify our lack of safety equipment and report back when we have done so.
We've been told that there is a big problem with drug smuggling into France, so before the gendarmes sent a diver to inspect our boat's bottom, before they ordered our little Yogi-dog off the boat so that their drug sniffing dog could inspect all our corners and before they made Dwight take a breathalizer test for drugs, we quickly fed all our contraband to the dog ...............just kidding.

Duty calls even when it's raining

 
Glitch number three: we cannot cook without propane and Yogi-dog is running out of his super-deluxe home-made dog food.  In our search for propane, we had to by-pass some lovely little "haulte fluvials" that needed exploring.  Guess that someday we will just have to return to do the Muese again.  Not too sure that is a glitch though.

Finally, a little visual aid to show just how fast we travel.

 

Now it's time to join some fellow American cruisers for a glass of wine this evening.  It's a small world, so when we found out that they are from Tucson and spend their summers on the European waterways.....well, golly, it didn't surprise us at all. 

Cruising Time

Finally, it is time to move this boat.  Graduations are all over, I am back from safari and Dwight, who feels like he's been in Liege since 'nineteen-ought-four', is anxious to see new sights.  With any luck at all, we will be saying goodbye to the Liege Marina on Friday morning, July 15.

Yes, you read that word correctly - safari.  Not what it used to be though.  I think I saw more tourists than animals.  These days, at least in Tanzania, you ride through national parks while standing in the back of a Land Rover hoping to catch a glimpse of "the big 5": lion, rhino, elephant, leopard and cheetah. Seems like the people are caged not the animals.  But we saw every one of them roaming free (plus a few more) and traffic, traffic, traffic.  I never imagined that I would be stuck in a traffic jam in the Serengeti.  Guides don't have to search for game anymore, they just have to be good at spotting a group of Land Rovers on the horizon.

Looking through traffic at a leopard lazing in a tree (we did get closer)

Very glad I got to go to Africa though.  All the things I expected to see are still there; hundreds of wildebeest and fat-bottomed zebra, giraffes chomping on the tops of trees, elephants strolling ponderously through the bush, and in early July, adorable babies of every kind from baboons to buffalo.  Plus in 11 African days, I was only bug-bitten 27 times.  Not bad for me.

The graduations were worth waiting for; my nephew, written up in the local newspaper as a young man with the ability to go his own way, will be studying film making in college; my 6'1" 14 year old grandson is out of middle school and on his way to an exciting high school basketball career; my 18 year old granddaughter, senior class president and prom queen, is on her way to UC Davis to study molecular biology (she thinks), and our double major university graduate, my oldest granddaughter, is working with autistic children changing their lives for the better. Bragging? You betcha'! To all those old cranks complaining about this younger generation....you don't know what you're talking about.

  The 3 graduates in the middle of family

Now it's back to doing what we do best...canal cruising.