Day 176: Guntersville, AL to Nickajack Lake, Tennessee
Day 176: Tuesday, October 11th: We got up before the sun this morning and were underway just before sunrise. We wanted to make about 75 miles today.
It was another semi-foggy morning, with dense cloud cover, but the river and mountains were pretty as we turned upstream:
The fog made everything seem sort of eerie:
About 11:30 we spotted Freedom, the 100-foot Hatteras approaching fast from astern. He was throwing a wake the surfers would have loved. However, he called us on the radio and we arranged a "slow pass". We slowed down and he came around us making almost no wake; very nice of him:
It really is a pretty yacht:
After he passed we pulled behind him and radioed the "all clear". He took off in a roar. This is just as he was pushing the throttles up:
Interestingly, we saw Freedom the next two days - first in downtown Chattanooga, then on Lake Chickamauga in Tennessee.
We proceeded up the river and came to a section where the channel edge was lined with thin low islands. These marked the old riverbanks before the TVA dams were built and there were shallow bays and sloughs behind them. By now the day had turned sunny and warm:
This is another view of the same phenomenon:
We soon spotted these towers. An electrical transmission line in the foreground and a nuclear plant cooling tower in the background:
A few hundred yards later, we got this view of two towers:
Just past the bridge is the third largest of TVA's twelve coal fired steam generating plants. The big tower is 1,000 feet tall, one of the tallest structures in the Tennessee Valley region:
About two miles past this Southern Railway bridge is the Alabama/Tennessee state border:
Six miles farther up the river we arrived at Nickajack Lock and Dam, the newest dam on the river, completed in 1967:
We were the first ones in the lock, but locked through with Duck Puddle and Sea Gypsy who came huffing and puffing up behind us to make the lock-through. It was by far the smoothest ride up of any lock we have traversed:
Above the dam, Nickajack Lake was beautiful:
A scant mile above the lock as we were feeling our way into an anchorage, we got a call on the radio from friends aboard Rosetta inviting us to share the free dock at the Shellmound Recreation Area; we did so:
This was an extremely nice park with a campground about half a mile away. And it was free:
Position tonight: N35 00.457 W085 36.321
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