Nashville to the Tennessee River
October 27, 2023
We left Nashville early and made a long run back up the Cumberland River to Dover, TN. I put WW behind an island, we set two anchors bow and stern with the river flow, and enjoyed a beautiful, sunny evening and sunset. About 2AM I awoke after Rob got up because something was amiss. WW had swung to sit perpendicular to the flow and banks with both anchor lines lying loose. The physics of a boat sitting still in a flowing river with no dam altering the flow, almost zero breeze, and your bow to shore was mindboggling at 2AM and remains another physics anomaly of my journey. It was quite light out because the moon was near full in the east, and a thunder and lightning storm was approaching from the west. We hurriedly reset the anchors just in time for the storm to hit. It was a bit eerie, but we laughed and called the event the ‘night of the thundering moon’, which we thought better of later and renamed it the ‘night of the thunder and lightning moon’. It was a night to remember and probably a sight to see given that I may have forgotten to put on my pants.
We made coffee the next morning, checked the navigation plans, and noticed that our next destination, Paris Landing State Park, was just 15km away, but alas, it was 85 nautical miles by boat. We were going to head north then south, circumnavigating the Land Between the Lakes, formerly the ‘Land Between the Rivers’ prior to the arrival of the Corp. It was a fun ride up the Cumberland River and Lake Barkley because it is a beautiful landscape with many eagles, pelicans, egrets, herons, kingfishers, and those flamingos again, all of which Rob really enjoyed. We had to wait for a big thunderstorm to pass, not something you want to be boating through, then finished off Lake Barkley and headed west then south down Kentucky Lake. The peninsula that is Land Between the Lakes was quite beautiful with cliffs and coves and I suspect a fun place for boaters and hikers.
The next day we continued south and as we passed New Johnsonville and another massive riverside industry, this time chemicals, I looked in an inlet and there was the Tenley Anna. They had been hop-scotching down Kentucky Lake enjoying those coves for several days, and we were both headed to Clifton for the evening. I took WW into the Tennessee River Freshwater Pearl Farm which was an interesting side trip to see those amazing freshwater mussels in action again. Unfortunately, there were no tours that day.
Clifton Marina is quite small. The fuel dock, where the fuel gets pumped, the transient dock, where visiting boats tie up, and the pub are the same space. We had a pleasant evening catching up, meeting some new Loopers who also trucked their boat to get by the closed locks, and listening to a local musician who serenaded us when back in bed 50‘ away. We met a cool couple, Mike and Jan, on a DeFever 43, a very big and immaculately maintained boat of 1970s vintage, who were in their 70s and travel from the Florida Keys to Kentucky twice a year for the last 23 years. They were up early to go walking which is more than I could muster that day. The marina’s small size and being enclosed from the river made it a rather unhealthy aquatic environment, but I watched a river otter fishing beside WW dipping in and out of the fuel/oil slicks. There is more about boating, marinas, and the environment for me to write about later.
Our next stop was Pickwick Lake. It was created by a large dam that is among several dams and reservoirs built after many failed engineering attempts to overcome the treacherous Muscle Shoals of the Tennessee River. The construction of the dams along this wonderful river is an interesting history wrapped around the Tennessee Valley Authority created by President Roosevelt to address flooding and the poverty of this region. A few people had said that Pickwick Lake was the nicest and clearest water in the region. Clear is a relative term in the Mississippi catchment. Pickwick Lake was the clearest waterbody I traversed, although its Secchi depth was <2m, which is science-speak for you can’t see your toes when you are in the water. I still swam twice. There were some huge homes on this lake that might have made President Roosevelt feel he was successful, including a few on the cliffs that reminded me of lakes in the Italian Alps.
We spent the night here then headed south and west towards Chattanooga, TN.
Until next time from somewhere down the crazy river.
Allen
Columbus, AL
