Join us as we travel North America's rivers, waterways, and canals; visit U.S. and Canadian cities, historical landmarks, national parks and river towns. We may even take you to the Bahamas.
Part I; Tennessee River, Foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, Tennessee. En route to Chattanooga.
Nov. 11-13; mile 463 ; Today’s run: 101 miles
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Dear Readers: I made an error in my last post. I wrote: “Our air draft is 14 ft including aerials.” It should have read, “Our air draft is 13 ft plus antennas.”
A winding Tennessee River runs through Alabama and Tennessee.
We were underway by 6:30. It was going to be a long day.
Guntersville’s Lock.
Guntersville Lake: A wealth of history lies beneath this artificial, 2-mile wide lake, including towns, and Indian mounds.Sequatchie Valley, 125 miles long and 5 miles wide, is one of the world’s 2 rift valleys. A rift is created when the earth splits apart. ( Courtesy of the Tennessee River Guide, Frank Meyers.) Scrap metalAlong this shoreline, (mile 350), a cave located just above the waterline, is a sanctuary for the engendered gray bat. Apparently, thousands of bats fly out of the cave at dusk.
It is this scenery that entices boaters to do a side trip to Chattanooga and we almost had the river to ourselves.
You can’t have too many fishing lines out.The Tennessee Valley has the largest population of gray bats in the Nation.
Less than 1 percent of all caves have the right temperature and humidity for the gray bat to reproduce and survive, ( Bat info courtesy of the Tennessee River Cruise Guide, Frank Meyers.)It looks as if this boat owner needs to climb a set of steep stairs and do a little mountain climbing to access the cottage.
Aggregate miningOur travel speed on the rivers was approximately 10 mph. When passing cottages, marinas, motoring beneath bridges, and other areas of ‘no wake’ zones, we dropped our speed to around 7 mph. A Back Cove 41, can perform at much higher speeds, but when choosing cruising speed, we take into consideration, local speed limits, fuel consumption, sea conditions when traveling in open water, and the time the sun will set to avoid arriving to a destination after dark.
Traveling the Great Loop 
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