10/17/2019

We departed the anchorage this morning after waiting for some fog to clear.  It was a chilly morning.  Tim and I started the day on the flybridge, but after a few minutes we realized it was crazy to be up in the wind.  We drove from the comfort of the lower helm until the day warmed up some.

We didn’t know that Guntersville is a hotbed of bass fishing.  Unbeknownst to us there is a bass tournament there almost every week, and one was in progress this day.  We had a large number of bass boats zipping past us as they moved from fishing spot to fishing spot.

This stretch of the river had some spectacular views.  The hills are a thousand feet or more in height, and they have steep cliffs that come down to the river.  Very beautiful area as you can see in the photos below.

Along the way we saw a sign for Rock City.  Tim and Susan had been there, but Marilou and I have not.  It is apparently something akin to Wall Drug in South Dakota, though the signs aren’t nearly as interesting.

In mid afternoon we arrived at Chattanooga.  The current was quite strong, and we had to dock at a slip with the current pushing us sideways.  We got in without damage, but that was a really hard one.  We were also treated tonight to a beautiful sunset with the local tour boat ‘Southern Belle’ passing us.

We will stay here about a week so Tim and Susan can visit relatives in Atlanta before rejoining us to go to Knoxville.

10/16/2019

We departed the Ditto Landing Marina late this morning after a front passed through.  This brought a little rain and some wind, and after it passed the skies cleared almost immediately.  We had a clear, chilly and blustery day.

This stretch of the Tennessee River begins to enter the hills of north Alabama and eastern Tennessee.  Locals call them ‘mountains’, but in my mind they are just steep hills.  They are interesting sights nonetheless.  In some cases the hills plunge several hundred feet into the river, yielding very attractive views.  The photos below show some of these views as we transited up this stretch of the river.

It is worthwhile to point out some of the terminology used on the river.  Upriver travel is called ‘northbound’ regardless of the compass reading.  Since we are traveling from Paducah to Chattanooga, generally south and east by our compass, but upriver against the current, we are going northbound.  Downriver travel is ‘southbound’.  It simplifies communication with the professionals on the river to use the same language as is common in their communications.

The location on the river is specified in two ways.  The river is marked out in statute mile increments originating at Paducah, and the shore site is specified as Left Descending Bank (LDB) or Right Descending Bank (RDB).  The LDB is the left (port) side when facing downriver, and RDB is the right (starboard) side.  So today we traveled from mile 333.5 RDB to mile 366.6 LDB.

Tonight we are anchored in a cove called ‘Town Creek’ on the LDB near Guntersville, Alabama.  Photos of the cove and tonight’s sunset are shown below.  This is a quiet spot to get out of the wind for the night.

Tomorrow we will continue up the river to reenter Tennessee.  That is important since Tim and I bought annual fishing licenses for Tennessee and we’re interested in getting back to that.

10/14-15/2019

This morning, 10/14, we woke to fog.  The air temperature was in the upper 40’s and this caused fog to form near the river surface.  We waited for the air to warm from solar heating before leaving the marina so that the fog would dissipate.

After just a few miles we came to the Wilson Lock.  This lock and dam were opened in 1924 and it is the highest lift lock in the US east of the Rocky Mountains.  On this day it lifted us 96-1/2 feet.  The photos below show the lock doors opening and two recreational boats exiting the lock after they were fully open.

After the lock chamber was cleared we went into the lock by ourselves.  The first photo below shows the view forward to the upstream chamber wall and door, and this gives an idea of the vertical lift of the lock.  The upper chamber door lowers in a track when opening, and the second photo shows this door beginning it’s descent to open for us.  Comparing the structure around the door gives an idea of the scale of this lock.

After passing the Wilson lock we began the short transit to Joe Wheeler Lock, the next lock and dam in the Tennessee Valley Authority system.  We called the lock to see if we could get through, and they told us there was a tow in front of us that would cause a three hour wait.  That meant we would leave the lock at 7:30 PM.  Well after dark, and too late for us.  We decided to anchor up a side creek for the night in spite of only having traveled a few miles.  It was a quiet night.

On 10/15 we called Wheeler lock and found there was a group of pleasure boats locking through in a few minutes.  Thus we got underway quickly and locked through with them.  That was a good move.

We continued on up the Tennessee with the intention of stopping at a free dock near Decatur.  When we tried to enter the harbor we found shallow water and we weren’t comfortable with it.  Thus we backed out into the river and continued on.

Decatur has an industrial area that stretches for at least 10 miles along the river.  One of the plants is shown below, and we were surprised to discover Decatur is the home of Meow Mix.  Who knew?  It was good to see the active industrial areas keeping the economy strong.

We continued on up the river, but found few spots we thought would make an acceptable anchorage.  Thus we continued to a marina at Huntsville, Alabama.  Rain was threatening, and we were out of beer, so this made a good spot to stop.

Tomorrow we will continue, probably to Guntersville.

8/12-13/2019

We decided to spend a couple days in Florence, Alabama to have a break.  This area is actually four towns that have grown together, Florence, Muscle Shoals, Sheffield and Tuscumbia.  The area may be best known as Muscle Shoals.  We got a rental car to enable provisioning and for sightseeing.

Our first visit was to the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio at 3614 Jackson Highway.  The building was originally a casket showroom for the cemetery across the street.  It is actually in Sheffield, not that it matters.  This studio was started by four studio session musicians, known as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section or the Swampers, that split off from another studio in town because of a money dispute.  They had little money, but they rented this building in 1969 and set it up for recording sessions.  With the lack of money they couldn’t afford to outfit the building properly, and they had problems during rainstorms with rain noise on the tin roof.  They bought burlap and house insulation to try to mute the noise.  They also identified sound dead zones around the walls of the concrete block building.  To overcome this they got Styrofoam packing material from the local electric company for the glass parts of the electric meters and glued this to the walls to control the sound reverberations.  You can see some of these in the photos below.

The first recording session here was Cher with an album named after the address.  It was a flop.  The most notable thing about the album is that her husband, Sonny, was really obnoxious, and when he went outside they locked the doors and wouldn’t let him back in.  In December, 1969 the Rolling Stones booked the studio for three days and recorded the songs “Brown Sugar” and “Wild Horses” during their brief time there.  ‘Wild Horses’ was written by Keith Richards in the toilet for privacy.  Something like 89% of the songs recorded in the studio were chart hits with the session musicians playing on all of them.  The groups included Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, the Rolling Stones, Boz Scaggs, Staple Singers, Paul Simon, Rod Stewart, Derek and the Dominoes, Cream, Bob Seger, Cat Stevens and on and on and on.  We were really impressed with the visit, some of which is shown in the photos below.

The group Lynyrd Skynyrd was a local band that was first discovered by this studio.  They wrote a classic song, Sweet Home Alabama, that immortalizes this place.  The line, “In Muscle Shoals they got the Swampers”, a direct reference to this studio and the session musicians.

While in Florence we also visited a Frank Lloyd Wright design, the Rosenbaum House.  A couple views of this house are shown below.  This is the only Frank Lloyd Wright house in Alabama, and true to his reputation the house always had serious problems.  The roof leaked badly, the heating system failed almost immediately, the furniture that Wright demanded the owners use was uncomfortable and almost unusable.  It is a neat place.

This house is based on what Wright called a ‘Usonian Design’, short for the United States Of North America.  He always said his houses were designed to be upgraded or added onto as a family grew.  This is the only Wright design where that occurred. The Rosenbaum family grew from two boys to four, which required additional space for the originally 1500 square foot house, and Wright met their needs with an addition.  It was really interesting to see how that was accomplished.

On Sunday we took a trip to the Civil War battlefield at Shiloh.  In March, 1862 Union troops were landed on the west side of the Tennessee River, and when in sufficient force they planned to attack the strategic railroad junction at Corinth, Mississippi.  Holding Corinth would cut the only Confederate rail line between the Mississippi River and the east coast, a very laudable military goal.  On April 5, 1862, before the Union Army was fully in place, Confederate General Johnston attacked hoping to destroy the Union Army.  Over 23,000 casualties occurred here over the two-day battle.  A somber reminder of what it took to exorcise slavery from the country.  The battlefield was actually quite small, at most 2-3 miles across.  There is a good driving tour through the battlefield.  The photos below show the reconstructed Shiloh Meeting House which was the initial focus of the Confederate attack on the first day of the battle.  This was a Methodist church that served the local residents, and surprisingly the church is still in operation and has a modern building right next door to the site of the original log church.  The church cemetery there has recent burials from deceased persons who apparently were members.

Tomorrow we will move further up the Tennessee river towards Guntersville.

10/11/2019

Today we departed the marina at Grand Harbor and moved up Pickwick Lake to Florence Alabama.  The lake has somewhat controlled depth, though the Army Corps of Engineers sometimes can’t control nature.  More on that below.

This stretch of the river has very beautiful scenery as shown in the photos below.  I was especially impressed with the steep banks and beautiful trees and rock cliffs along this section of the river.

Along the way we passed the bridge across the Tennessee River for the Natchez Trace Parkway.  The Natchez Trace was originally a 440 mile forest trail from Nashville to Natchez, Mississippi first adopted by the local Indians, and then by the Europeans that entered the area.  The bridge is in a spot where a ferry was operated from 1800 to 1819 by George Colbert, a half-breed Chickasaw Indian.  He would use his ferry at this spot to move Indians, settlers, cargo wagons and outlaws back and forth across the river.  The view below was the western end of the bridge, and I think his ferry landing was in the open area to the right of that.

Along the way we passed several areas with expansive green floating mats, sort of shown in the photo below off the point of the island.  We first thought this was an algae bloom, but we realized that this was hydrilla, an invasive species probably released by aquarium owners.

Tonight we stopped at a marina in Florence, Alabama.  We will spend a few days here to rest and enjoy the area.  This part of the river experienced substantial flooding this past spring.  The photo below shows a view down the boat ramp at the marina with the floating docks in the background.  On the light pole, highlighted by the arrow I added, there is a zip-tie that marks the height of the water during the flood.  I really found this amazing.  Many of the liveaboards in the marina stayed on their boats through the flood.  They couldn’t get ashore for about 10 days, but they really didn’t have problems during that time.

10/10/2019

This morning we departed the anchorage at Beech Creek Island and continued on up the Tennessee River.  The scenery today was very similar to previous days.  We did notice some of the riverbanks suffered from significant erosion during flood events, and some homeowners had protected their riverbanks with rock on an attempt to minimize the erosion damage.  A couple of photos below illustrate this.

Along the way today we passed Shiloh Battlefield, the site of a major Civil War battle.  The photos below show Pittsburgh Landing, one of the strongholds of the Union during this battle.  There was no place to stop safely and explore further, so Tim and I plan to go back via rental car in a couple days to explore this further.

Late in the day today we transited through Pickwick Lock.  This is the dam that forms Pickwick Lake.  The lock lifted us about 65 feet, the highest lift we have yet experienced.  It is an unusually large lock chamber as the photos show.  We thought it was an unusually easy lock in which to control the boat.

We stopped tonight at Grand Harbor Marina.  This is in the headwaters of the Tombigbee River just off Pickwick Lake.  We plan to continue on up the Tennessee River tomorrow to Florence, Alabama.

10/9/2019

After leaving the anchorage at Rockport Island we continued up the Tennessee River today.  We passed some spectacular scenery, a large number of riverside houses built to survive flooding, and are anchored again tonight in a spot called Beech Creek Island.

The views along the river in this stretch are really spectacular.  These range from lowlands to high rock cliffs as shown in the photos below.  Very often high cliffs will be on one side of the river with lowlands directly across from them.

There has been a good deal of new housing construction along this part of the river.  The photos below show a few of the many houses we passed.  These are typically constructed on the side of the river (maybe on a levee) and are either on a high hill or on tall stilts.  Those houses which seem to have lower levels are really designed with walls that will breakaway in a flood to minimize damage.  It must be difficult to get furniture up into these places.

Along the way today we passed a dredge working in one stretch of the river.  The photos below show the dredge from a couple different vantage points along with the barges parked on the side holding dredge spoils.  It was an interesting operation.

The last photo in the group is a closeup of the day shapes on the dredge.  They are required to display shapes like these to identify their operations.  The center symbol is a ball-diamond-ball signal which means they are restricted in ability to maneuver.  The other two signals are two balls (on the left in this photo) and two diamonds (on the right).  In this situation the two balls mean you can’t pass on that side of the dredge, and to go on the side with the diamonds.  There are similar light patterns that they display at night, but we seldom travel then so I can’t remember them.

We are anchored tonight behind an island just off the main channel.  There are five other boats here with us.  It is an unusually deep anchorage, and we had some trouble finding a spot at the right depth for us.  We succeeded in that, and so hope to have a peaceful night.

10/8/2019

This morning, after filling our water and fuel tanks, we continued up the Tennessee River.  The shorelines continued to be pretty remote as shown in the photos below.  We were struck by the lack of development along the river.  Granted, the Land Between the Lakes is controlled by the US Forest Service, but after passing that area there was still little development.  I found this enticing.

As the photos show, we passed one ferry which runs on demand, and an abandoned grain silo.  While the silo isn’t in operation it still makes an interesting view.

The photo below shows that Sinbad is really unhappy having visitors aboard.  He is quite stressed with this turn of events.

We are anchored tonight in a spot called Rockport Island.  This is a deep spot outside the main navigation channel as shown in the photos below, and it is a quiet and remote location.  We saw a fox on the shoreline as we were coming into the anchorage, and a pair of bald eagles on the shoreline a little after anchoring.  This is a very peaceful spot.

10/7/2019

This morning we departed the resort marina at Green Turtle Bay and started up Barkley Lake which is the lower part of the Cumberland River.  After about a mile we went through the canal into Kentucky Lake which is the lower part of the Tennessee River.  Barkley Dam and the canal connecting the lake to Kentucky Lack were completed in the 1960’s, enabling improved navigation throughout this region.

When we visited Kentucky Dam we were given a map of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a photo of which is shown below.  This shows the lakes, dams and power plants throughout the TVA system.  We are starting at the upper left corner near Paducah, and our plan is to move through the Tennessee River to Chattanooga.

This section of the Tennessee River, and Kentucky Lake, are one of the largest manmade reservoirs in the country.  This is very large water, but much of it is shallow because it is flooded land.  The channel has plenty of water, perhaps due to dredging.  The photos below show some of the shoreline along this stretch of the river.  This is a remote area with little development along the shoreline.

We are continuing to enjoy Tim and Susan’s visit.  I managed to get photos of Susan and Marilou today which are shown below.

Tonight we are at a state park marina at Paris Landing, Tennessee.  This marina has the lowest price fuel on the Tennessee River, so this is a chance to top up our fuel tanks.

10/4-6/2019

After an unseasonable hot spell we were joined by our good friends, Tim and Susan Floyd.  I was privileged to work with Tim before our retirements, and we formed a good friendship during that time.  They lent us immense help last year when I hurt my back, and we could not have gotten through that part of our adventure without them.  Sinbad is overjoyed to have more members of the pack aboard.

We (Marilou and Susan) managed to work out a visit to the National Quilt Museum in Paducah.  Tim and I were banished to husband daycare.  The girls had to pay for our food and drink while we were held there, but we managed to survive well enough.  The duck and bacon wontons had us entranced for a while, and the gentleman working in the establishment worked hard to keep us adequately hydrated.

The photos from the Quilt Museum are shown below.  Marilou and Susan were quite impressed with the displays.  The second two photos are of the same artistic quilt showing a wide view and a closeup.  While I am sure I don’t appreciate all the work, I thought the face image quilt was interesting.

We also took a car trip through the Land Between the Lakes.  This is the former rural land area between the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers above the dams.  The farmers and small towns in this area were evacuated in the 1960s when the Barkley dam was completed, and the land was turned into National Forest.  Several years ago a group of globalists moved this region under UN control, and subsequently the area was returned to US control and placed under administration of the US Forest Service.  That is really where it belongs, and I hope it can stay there.

A part of this region has been set aside as an elk and bison reserve.  The forest was restored to a woodland-prairie mix, and elk and bison were introduced into the fenced area.  The area is about 700 acres, and there are 48 elk and 49 bison presently in the fenced area.  We went on a car tour of the area, and the photos below show some of the region.  Unfortunately, while we saw a fair amount of scat from the bison, we did not see any animals.

We also visited the Kentucky Dam.  This was opened in 1944 under the Tennessee Valley Authority to control flooding, provide navigable channels in the Tennessee River, and to generate hydroelectric power.  The dam has been a tremendous success, and today it is self supporting without any federal funding.  The photos below show the dam and the power substation at the dam.  Unfortunately with the 2001 terrorist attacks access to the dam and locks were restricted, so we could not get photos of much of this.

Tomorrow we will depart Green Turtle Bay and begin our trip up the Tennessee River.