The Tennessee River Runs Low

Greetings from our anchorage at Diamond Island on the Tennessee River.  KG here - I’m enjoying the fact that we’re spending a long time on the Tennessee River mostly because when I come on watch I play one of my favorite songs from the band The Secret Sisters (The Tennessee River Runs Low) through the portable speaker in the cockpit and sing along at full volume.  If you’re not familiar with this excellent duo, I suggest you check them out ASAP.  They sing a wide array of styles and they have KILLER tight harmonies.  Here’s a Spotify link to the song. The Secret Sisters Song

As Tony suggested in his last post, we have been having some chilly nights.  This morning dawned at the expected 44 degrees but also very foggy as you can see here.

Since we’ve left the Mississippi, we no longer have the luxury of river walks to run on, and instead I’m often running opposite traffic alongside country roads so I chose to wait until the fog cleared for my morning run.  Here is the harbor an hour after the previous picture was taken with clear visibility.

This area of the country has lots of rolling hills which makes for some challenging runs.  Today I ran along an airport and the Ross Creek Landing Golf Course (apparently a Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course) that was very scenic.  I enjoyed these cacti all along the golf course road, and even got my usual morning run bridge picture at the course.

Because the fog didn’t burn off till 9AM we didn’t get underway until 11 AM which is a very late start.  Luckily our plan was to only travel 35 miles and anchor which we had time for.  The river is a bit narrower, we’ve had much closer passings with the tows, but the sandy shores are really beautiful and we have been having fun checking out the palatial vacation homes on various parts of the river as you can see here.  

We did see one for sale near Saltillo, TN in case anyone is looking.

It was a fairly uneventful drive today with our enclosure up again.  We’re hoping the weather is warmer and we can get back to our open air cockpit tomorrow.  As I said above, we are anchored at Diamond Island which is beautiful and we are enjoying the sounds of a very chatty owl.  We are very close to the Tennessee-Mississippi boarder which we plan to cross tomorrow, though we will follow the river back to Tennessee since we’re planning to visit Chattanooga in a little over a week.  Funnily enough, about 30 minutes after we finished anchoring, another “Looper” showed up to share the anchorage on a boat named Dragonfly.  So far we’ve found 3 boats currently doing the Great Loop named Dragonfly including us.