10/10/15 – 10/27/15    Side trip to Chattanooga, TN

10/10/15                      Florence, AL

When we left Grand Harbor we headed upriver on the Tennessee River. The river meanders through beautiful countryside but not a lot of development. Most of the lands along the Tennessee River belong to the state or federal government. There are numerous parks and many wildlife refuges.

 

Our stop for the night was at the Florence Marina. Our first sight of the marina was from the beach along the river. This was a very busy marina and had a large number of loopers in for the night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10/11/15                      Decatur, AL

Continuing upriver we had 6 loopers travelling together. We had to go up two very large locks. The first was 95 feet and the second 85. It is usually best for numerous boats to arrive at the locks together. In that way, you are usually worked in faster.

Lock 1

Lock 2

We pulled into Riverwalk Marina and ate on the boat since the restaurant was closed.

10/12/15                      Guntersville, AL

The territory continues to get more mountainous. Even as we entered the Guntersville Marina you could see the surrounding mountains.

The riverfront area around the marina was actually on the water instead of on top of the mountains. But that doesn’t mean they were any less expensive looking.
 



This is actually a house boat!

Here come the mountains
 

I’m glad I don’t have to walk those steps

10/13/15                      Burns Island, TN

Our next stop was to anchor on the side of Burns Island right off the river. We got up early the next morning to get going again. There was a little fog burning off the water around the boat.

 

10/14/15                      Chattanooga, TN

We figured this fog would burn off quickly so we headed out into the river and boy did we get a surprise.

It looked as if the fog was moving up the river from behind us. Then we turned a bend and it looked like soup in front of us too. So we actually put it in neutral and just tried to stay next to the buoy.
 

Fog coming in behind us

Fog in front of us

Fog beginning to clear

As the fog lifted we continued on our way and the day became beautiful once again. And the mountains continued to reach higher.
 

And the homes were up on the tops of the mountains.

We finally arrived at the waterfront of Chattanooga.

This is where we docked

Dedicated Walking/Biking bridge to the other side of the river.

The city itself was full of hills. To get from the pier up to the city there were 70 steps on one end and over 90 at the other end. The shorter route up was also unique in that it contained a set of waterfall steps for visitors to cool down. This was just on the side of the Aquarium.
 

We took the bus to the Lookout Mountain Incline Railway, the steepest railway in the world. It ascends the mountain a mile at 77 degrees at its steepest point. . There are two cars that pass each other on the trip up/down the mountain to balance the load. The actual railcars are specifically designed for this trip. The seats and steps were at a 17 degree angle within the car. Very interesting!

The views from Lookout Mountain

Other sights around Chattanooga

 

Museum

Rock Climbing on the side of a garage

 

10/17/15 - 10/18/15     Goose Pond, AL

When we left Chattanooga we headed back downriver.  We stopped at Goose Pond for two nights to give us a chance to recoup from the big city. There was a very narrow channel getting into to the marina.
 

 

10/19/15                      Huntsville, AL

We spent the next night in Ditto Marina. Sorry not much in pictures.
 

10/20/15                      Athens. AL

We only spent one night here despite planning to stay longer. We just didn’t like this one and it may have been strictly related to where we were located.

10/21/15 – 10/27/15    Rogersville, AL

We moved on down the river about 10 miles to Joe Wheeler State Park. Wow this is a neat place and the scenery is just wonderful.
 

We definitely are not far enough south

We are spending this week cleaning and provisioning the boat for our expected company.  We will be picking up Denny and Chyrl Neus at the Huntsville airport on the 27^th. These are very close friends of ours and we are looking forward to having them on board.

 Believe it or not we have been doing all our shopping in Florence, AL in which we actually stayed at the top of this post.

Stay tuned as we head down to the Gulf of Mexico.