Integrity Cruise

Day 161: Decaturville to Pickwick Landing, Tennessee

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Day 161: Monday, September 26th: The rain had almost stopped and the wind had died down by 6:00am this morning, so we got underway and hoped to make up for lost time.

Early on, we saw something neither of us had ever seen before. It was a Bald Eagle standing on the ground. We have only seen them flying or high in trees. I know, you would never know what those white spots were if we hadn't told you. This is as close as we could get:

Here's another spot along the river that looks like the river is really sloping:

We kept running in and out of rain showers, but they were definitely diminishing:

We were passing through an area geologists call the Highland Rim. Seems there was a very large, almost round formation of elevated rock eons ago. The rivers have carved out the middle ground and left a high rim. It looks like this in certain areas:

As we approached the little town of Savannah, TN (yes, there is a Savannah in the Volunteer state also) we saw this beautiful antebellum home; it is Cherry Mansion, noted for two reasons. First, it was built on one of fourteen mounds built by mound builders. Some of the fourteen were over thirty feet high and covered a half-acre. This house was constructed by slave labor in 1830. The second notable thing is General Ulysses S. Grant was eating breakfast here on April 6, 1862, when he heard distant artillery fire as Confederate forces suddenly attacked his army at Shiloh. Grant used the house as his headquarters during the fierce two-day battle. Here is the house today:

We were going upstream on the Tennessee, and the closer we got to Pickwick Landing Dam, the narrower the river became and the swifter the current became. We calculated it was a four mph current. This is what a buoy looks like going four mph through the water:

We finally arrived at the dam; at this point, we felt like we were hardly moving. We were going about 9.5 mph through the water, but the four mph current took its toll:

This is the understatement of the day. The current was swirling us every which way:

This dam has two locks but the smaller one is no longer operating. It is partly obscured on the left while the main chamber is on the right:

Like the eagle on the ground, we have never seen a Great Blue Heron perched this high off the water; he is WAY up there:

The lock was ready and waiting for us, thanks to an earlier phone call. It is HUGE!

The TVA locks, of which this is one, have floating bollards (posts) built into the lock walls. You toss a line around the bollard and it floats up with you as the lock chamber fills. Here is the bollard:

This is looking up the 60-foot guide in the lock wall:

They also have fixed bollards in the wall about every five vertical feet, but using them is a lot more work:

When the lock gates opened at the top, this big fellow who had been patiently waiting for us, greeted us. Commercial traffic has priority over pleasure craft, but that phone call..

Looking back at the dam, you get a pretty good view of the hydroelectric plant:

That big tow that was waiting looked like this at the rear. He had two barges tied off on his sides in addition to the ones he was pushing. Big load!

In about two miles we arrived at Pickwick Landing State Park. We had reservations at the park's marina:

The marina was very nice with almost new facilities. There were three other Loopers there:

Our next-slip neighbor was a converted wooden workboat from Seattle, WA. The owner was a single-hander and lives aboard. The boat is a "double-ender":

We had traveled 73 miles today plus the current run of about 2.5 mph average for a total distance through the water of about 97 miles. It was a very long run - perhaps our longest so far.

We traversed one more lock today for a total of 128 to date.

Position tonight: N30 03.236 W088 13.949

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