After years of planning, reading, purchasing charts and guidebooks, attending rendezvous, talking to others, and readying the Rick'N Roll II, we plan to leave Sneads Ferry on May 15, 2009 for our "Grand Adventure".  We will travel up the Atlantic seaboard, through the Chesapeake Bay, around the point at Cape May, NJ past Atlantic City NJ and into the Hudson River past the Statue of Liberty.  Then, up the Hudson River to Troy NY where we will turn to port and enter the Erie Canal.  We stay in the Erie Canal until a junction called Three Rivers where we turn into the Oswego Canal heading for Lake Ontario and crossing into Canada for Kingston.  There we enter the Trent-Severn waterway (with 53 locks) for Georgian Bay.  From Georgian Bay, we travel to Lake Michigan, reenter the US, go to Green Bay WI to visit Rick's sister and her family, and travel down lake Michigan to Chicago, by Labor Day(we want to be past Chicago at Labor day since it begins to get very cold in this area).  Entering the Illinois River, we travel south to join the Mighty Missippi River passing The Gateway Arch on the way to the Ohio River and Paducah where we join the Tennessee River.  We will travel up the Tennessee to Chattanooga, as this trip has been described as "breathtaking". Then back to the Tenn-Tom and Tom Bigbee Waterways for the trip south to Mobile, AL.  In Mobile, we follow the Gulf Intracoastal waterway to Carabelle FL where we go into the Gulf for the 160 mile passage to Tarpon Springs FL.  Then, down the West coast of Florida to the Florida Keys.  Heading North, we take the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway up Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and finally HOME.  In all, the trip should take about 10 months.  We should pass through 150+ locks, and meet thousands of wonderful people along the way.  We will dock in hundreds of marinas, town docks, and anchorages.  We plan to come home, via rental car, the last weekend of October 2009 for about two weeks and return to the boat to resume the route.  We will be somewhere in Canada for the 4^th of July and somewhere in Florida for Christmas.

 "Map used with permission, Raven Cove Publishing."