WEEK 30 - Grand Rivers, Kentucky to Pickwick Landing Sate Park, Tennessee

It was a great week heading about 200 miles up the beautiful Tennessee River as we work our way south in the inland rivers. The week was not without some challenges, like dealing with a tropical storm (!), a swarming bug infestation, lots of rain, and a hard cold snap (more on all that later). Our stops this week were at Kenlake State park, Kentucky (marina, 2 nights), Harmon Creek, Tennessee (anchor), Double Islands (anchor), Clifton Marina (marina, 2 nights), and finally to Pickwick Landing Sate Park Marina, where we will spend a few days with some family coming to visit.

After a relaxing stay at Green Turtle Marina in Grand Rivers, we started to get itchy feet again. There was some bad weather on the horizon, as the remnants of Tropical Storm Olga were forecast to come barreling up the Tennessee Valley and bring several inches of rain and high winds. Most of the loopers at Green Turtle chose to wait it out there, but we decided to push about 25 miles south to a little marina at Kenlake State Park and hide out there. It seemed like a good spot to hole up – the marina basin was surrounded by a 20 foot high rock revetment, had a nice little restaurant on site, and was only 80 cents a foot per night. In between rain squalls, we found some nice trails to hike with Bella. And rain it did – Olga came through with 50 mph winds and driving rain for at least 24 straight hours. The wind driven rain found its way into a lot of little gaps around hatches and windows, and we were sopping up leaks left and right. It was even worse just a little bit upstream, with thousands of downed trees, a couple of tornados, and power outages that lasted for days.

Loopers lined up in a row at Green Turtle Bay marina, Grand Rivers, KY

Panoramic of the National Quilt Museum Gallery in Paducah, a side trip back to Paducah with the marina courtesy van. This is a must stop. The works displayed here are truly masterpieces.

Patti's 1880 Settlement in Grand Rivers, KY

Back on the Tennessee River heading to Kenlake State Park marina, KY

Though we didn't anchor here, we did pull in for a moment to see the rock walls covered by graffiti. The entire anchorage is covered.

Kenlake State Park, KY

Kenlake State Park, KY

When the weather finally cleared, we did about 45 miles to an anchorage off the main river at Harmon Creek. The twisty side channel led to some spots where you could anchor amongst a bunch of little islands, where we were soon joined by Two Loons, a beautiful 44 Manta power cat, and Outta the Loop as well. We had cocktail hour aboard Two Loons, and then settled in for the night. As soon as we turned on the anchor light, we were swarmed by a horde of big, weird long-legged flies. Attracted to the light, they started laying gross sticky black egg cases all over the place. Declining to do battle, I gave them a parting shot of Yard Guard and we retreated to the cabin. In the morning we hosed the dead bodies off with the anchor washdown hose and chased the live ones down with the Dyson vacuum as best we could.

Harmon Creek anchorage

Duck blind with a great blue heron on top and an egret to the right

These are the casualties.

It is as if these egg cases were glued on. This is one small patch but there were hundreds 😝😝

Shore leave for Bella

Back in the land of Cypress Trees

After being thoroughly grossed out by all the bugs, we got the anchor up and put in a 60-mile day to another anchorage at Double Islands. We got a nice spot in about 15 feet of water and launched the dinghy to go ashore with Bella on a nice wide clean sandy beach (no mud, yea!) that was at least a half mile long. There something familiar caught my eye – all along the beach there were tracks where turtles had come ashore to dig nests, just like sea turtles on our home beaches in Florida. The only difference was that these tracks were a bit smaller and had claw marks instead of flipper marks in them. We were joined that night by Outta the Loop and enjoyed one of our favorite anchorages on the whole trip.

Double Island shore leave for Bella

BellaGatto at Double Islands anchorage

Tracks on the shore

Pretty darn big tracks. Shoe pictured is a size 10!

BellaGatto at anchor

 

In the morning, the weather forecast for the next few days had another big slug of rain in it, this time associated with a strong cold front. It was time to hole up again for a couple of days, and we did a short 10 mile hop to Clifton Marina. We had actually planned on this stop since Paducah, and I had arranged for a new run solenoid for the generator to be delivered here. I was looking forward to getting that installed, since for the last couple of weeks running the generator involved a complicated jury rig of hot wires and tie-wraps to work around the bad solenoid. Starting the next morning it rained. All. Day. Long. While I worked on installing the generator part, Jayne did a much-needed total cleanup to get rid of the last traces of bugmageddon and other traveling filth. We also found time to borrow the marina car and go to the only shopping game in town, a Dollar General store a couple of miles away.

Fall colors starting on the Tennessee River

Downtown Clifton

Downtown Clifton

When the cold front passed through on Halloween morning, it was cloudy, drizzly, windy, and COLD. Simple creatures that we are, we thought this would be a good travel day. To be fair, we were bored with Clifton and were really looking forward to getting to Pickwick Landing, where we would meet Jayne’s sister, niece, and grand-niece and spend a couple of days ashore at a nice cabin in the park. It was only about 50 miles to Pickwick, but it was upstream against a current that was building to about 1.5 to 2 knots with all the rain, and we also needed to get through Pickwick lock, which would lift us 55 feet to Pickwick Lake. All in all, it was an 8-hour day. Buttoned up in the pilothouse with the heater going it was not so bad, but going out on deck in the drippy, windy cold was miserable. The crew at Pickwick Lock got us through without too much delay, and right past the lock was Pickwick Landing Sate Park and Marina, our home for the next several days. When we are done with our stop here, we will begin a side trip off the loop route to Chattanooga, joined by our good friends and guest crew Bob and Nancy.