The Beautiful Tennessee

The Tennesee River is beautiful for most of its run. This picture captures a typical bluff along the route. You can see the carved rock and the caves that have eroded because of the action of the river. While the Tennessee itself is largely tamed today, echoes of its wilder past can be found in the record of the rocks. This was taken on our way down the Tennessee toward Chatanooga to meet with Susan.

Nashville

Minnie Pearl and Roy Acuff are portrayed here in this statue in the lobby of the Ryman Theater in Nashville. It was, of course the site of the Grand Old Opry which is now located out of town at a huge complex. We did secure tickets to a performance and saw Loretta Lynn and Dierks Bentley.

One of my to do list things was to visit the Parthenon. It is still on my list because this one is in Nashville. A full size representation of the original in Athens, it is truly a beautiful building. We were not able to get inside to view the statue of Athena as it was closed. A temporary version of this building was erected for an exposition. It proved so popular that this permanent one was built in its place.

With Dick and Lynne Davenport from LadyHawke we also visited the home of Andrew Jackson, the Hermitage, which is several miles outside of Nashville (even further than the new Grand Old Opry). This picture shows Jackson's burial site in the family cemetary in one corner of a garden on the property. Trees from all the battle sites where Jackson fought were brought here and are planted around the mansion. Jackson had slaves of course and also hosted the many travelers who passed by to see him.

We saw many such displays at the Country Music Hall of Fame. Annette was thrilled to get in to see these and others like Elvis' Cadillac. She could have spent many more hours viewing all the displays.

Up the Cumberland

This is a picture of the site of Fort Donelson which was the object of a large battle during the Civil War. Grant was in charge of the attacking forces that eventually forced the confederates holding the fort to retreat. It is on the Cumberland River on the way to Nashville which it was supposed to protect. We were impressed by the importance of rivers in those days as both routes for armies and barriers to their movements.
These Tennessee Valley Authority stacks (the taller ones) are over a thousand feet tall but are no longer used. The height was designed to put pollutants into the stratosphere where they would presumably be less troublesome. More recent technologies have made them obsolete. The shorter stacks have scrubbers that remove most of the offensive materials and result in little or no objectionable emissions.

While at Green Turtle Bay

This is the museum in Paduca that Annette wanted to visit. She was able to share a courtesy car with some others and got to spend time here looking at some of the history of one of her passions. Yes, she is still quilting as we travel.
Hunter recalled some of the thru-hull valves on its boats. We were able to get the work done (at no expense to us) at a nearby marina on Kentucky Lake that had a resident Hunter dealership. While the boat was out, we had an extra zinc attached to the shaft to help with the electrolosis problem we will encounter in salt water. This marina was home to Galapago, a Hunter 356 like ours that was just completing the Big Loop. We helped them raise their mast while we were there.

Up the Ohio and the Tennesee

One of the challenges ahead of us was crossing the flooded dam and lock upstream. This dam is called a wicket dam. When the water is relatively low the wickets are raised to hold back the water and boats go through a lock around the dam. When water is high, the wickets are lowered and boats must navigate over that section of the dam where the lowered wickets are located. In this picture, one can see some of the turbulence the flow of water over these lowered wickets produces. At one point, we were only able to go 1.8 mph against the current over ground. We talked to some people whose boats had to get towed to make it past this area.

We were eventually able to slug our way up the Ohio to its junction with the Tennessee at Paducah. There we found relief from the strong current of the Ohio as the Tennessee was flowing at a far slower rate. From Paducah we made our way to Kentucky Lake and the canal that connects the Tennessee with the Cumberland River. This marina, Green Turtle Bay was our home for one week as we recuperated from the Ohio and met up with many of our traveling companions and fellow loopers. It was here that we learned that one of our trawler friends was still anchored in the Ohio current waiting rescue from Green Turtle towboats. A loose marker buoy had floated near his boat and the cable had wrapped around his driveshaft stopping the boat. Five days later they finally got the boat in at Green Turtle and hauled out for repairs.