Tennessee River - Kentucky Lake to Wheller Lake, Alabama

At our last update, we had arrived at Green Turtle Bay Marina on the Cumberland River for the weekend of September 18th, 19th and 20th. As we submit this posting on October 6th, we are back in Charlotte for a planned visit home to celebrate Jack’s 60th Birthday on the 8th and our first anniversary on the 11th. It is great to be home to share these two events with family and friends this weekend. However, we will also miss sharing these events with our “looper” friends and look forward to seeing everyone at the upcoming Looper Rendezvous at the end of the month. When we continue our travels in late October after the rendezvous, we will provide another update to the blog as we travel down the Tenn-Tom to Mobile and the Gulf.

We departed Little Turtle Bay Marina and made a short trip down the Cumberland and turned to port to join the Tennessee River. The Tennessee River begins just north of Knoxville and flows 650+ miles to the Ohio River, flowing southwest through Tennessee into Northeast Alabama before turning north through western Tennessee into the Ohio River just north of Paducah. Our travels will take us up the Tennessee, past the beginning of the Tenn-Tom Waterway, 287 miles to Bay Hill Marina in Athens, Alabama. Because of the strong current created by a lot of rain recently, we once again changed our plans to travel to Chattanooga, deciding to leave the boat in Athens, rent a car for sightseeing in the area, travel to Charlotte, return to attend the rendezvous in Rogersville, Alabama before continuing our journey on the water.

We began our 287 mile trip up the Tennessee River departing Green Turtle Bay Marina on September 21st and made a short trip – less than 20 miles – to a great anchorage at Sugar Bay on Kentucky Lake. "Meander" decided to stay a few days in Sugar Bay as we departed early the next day. We will see Ron and Marji at the Rendezvous. The following 3 pictures were taken on our 2nd anchorage at Clay Bay on Tuesday evening. The first is "Still Busy" on anchor taken from the dingy before the rain storm shown in the 2nd picture followed by the 3rd picture of a beautiful rainbow following the storm. What can't be seen in this photo are the deer eating grass on the side of the water. One of the most beautiful scenes we have seen on the trip! (remember you can click on the picture to enlarge)

It is great to be back into “lak’n” for a change after all the rivers and canals we have experienced recently. Over the next week, we anchored 4 nights, stayed at 2 marinas before arriving at Bay Hill Marina on Wheeler Lake on September 28th where we rented a car for our local and home travels over the next few weeks.

Below is a recap of our journey over the last few weeks in pictures:

This next picture is us anchored at Double Isle, just off the river behind two islands with a barge traveling down the river. Know I know why we look for anchorages out of the waterway!

In Canada, we traveled with John and Dottie aboard "Dar Sea" and last saw them in Lake Michigan just before they left their boat to go home for a few weeks. We have traded many emails and voice mails trying to reconnect and they finally caught up with us on Friday in Clifton, Tn. This first picture is "Dar Sea" passing us at a marina and the 2nd picture is both of us anchored at Diamond Island on the River. In spite of the heavy current, we dropped the dingy and joined John and Dottie for cocktails and snacks and stories of grandkids. It is really great to see them and look forward to traveling with them again. After the Rendezvous, we hope to reconnect with "Meander" and "Dar Sea".

We arrived at Bay Hill Marina on Wheeler Lake on September 28th and, as mentioned earlier, used the rental car to explore the area including a day spent at the NASA Space Center in Huntsville as well as seeing downtown Huntsville. A great day of sightseeing. This next picture was taken at NASA and I couldn't resist posting it on the blog with the title "I Am Glad We Don't Live in a Yellow Submarine". Looks even smaller than "Still Busy".

We secured "Still Busy" and began our drive home on Friday, stopping first in Chattanooga and staying in a Marriott for the first time in a long time using some of the many Marriott points Jack accumulated over the years of business travel. In the afternoon, we visited the famous Chattanooga Aquarium and attended a Blue Grass Festival on Friday night. Before leaving on Saturday, we also visited the "more famous" Chattanooga Choo-Choo before driving to Asheville, NC through the mountains. Once again, we used points to stay at the Marriott downtown Asheville and visited one of the largest single family homes in the US on Sunday - The Biltmore House.