Monday, July 20th
You may detect a twang in my voice oh I mean words, from all of the country music! We arrived in Nashville on Saturday and have been busy enjoying the city. It has been a good break after two very long days of travel to get here. We miscalculated how long it would take us to get to Clarksville and ended up spending the last hour driving in the dark! Not fun! There are so many floaters in the Cumberland that I was a nervous wreck, not counting the fact that it was pitch black and the river was not straight! Thank goodness we had the computer program to navigate by and the bugs weren't bad like they were when this happened two summers ago on our way to Green Turtle Bay. We arrived at the Clarksville city dock about 9:30 with a huge sigh of relief reminding ourselves that we said we would not travel in the dark ever again the last time this happened. The consensus was that we needed to do a better job of calculating our time! By then Peanut had both front and back legs crossed and almost didn't make it to the nearest grassy area. We felt bad for her, almost 10 hours on the water is a long time! A very nice couple helped us tie up. They were new to boating and anxious to talk when they found out we had been through a lock.
We left Clarksville at 9:00 We had one lock to tackle. When we arrived at the lock we found we had an hour and forty five minute wait because they had to break down a tow to get it in the lock. We had no place to tie up soooooo, we floated around for nearly two hours. By the time the tow was through there were 10 other boats waiting to get in the lock, thankfully we all fit! Once we were through the river widened for a while and was busy with "go fast boats" skiers and tubes. All out for a beautiful day on the water. Soon we were back to wilderness and quiet. We had not seen this part of the river but it was hard to enjoy the scenery because of all the logs, sticks and other stuff in the water. We had to do a lot of weaving around it all. At one point I thought to myself, if we were on a highway we would be pulled over for erratic driving! I did enjoy watching all the birds though. The river had no rip rap along this section and the erosion was clearly visible and disconcerting. Large trees had fallen in all along the banks, and the high banks had begun to fall in as well, much of it from the wake of the boats I am sure. As we neared Nashville the land quickly changed from forest to farm and then to hills. As we approached the city the skyline reminded me of Chicago as you neared the harbor. We arrived about 7:00pm. A long day, yes but the beautiful scenery, sunshine and the peacefulness of the surroundings made it an enjoyable one. I have added some new pictures below.