The tropical depression Ida had dropped lots of water in Eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. The Tennessee River level at Chattanooga was higher than normal and had flooded some of the downtown walkways and non-floating docks. It was the high water flowing downstream that closed the Chickamauga Lock to us for 2-1/2 days.
The dams on the Tennessee created by the TVA starting mainly in the 1930's created beautiful lakes but inundated many towns and farms. We saw evidence several places of previous farm locations evidenced by old silos sticking up out of the water.
Many of the locks on the Tennessee had lower end lock doors that were curved, such as this set on the Fort Loudoun lock.
As we reached Watts Bar Lake and further north in Lake Loudoun, we started seeing huge houses that I would have to call modern mansions. We have seen beautiful waterfront homes in Canada and along rivers, but I would have to rank these on the upper end of the Tennessee as the largest and the most unusual.
These beautiful homes also had some of the largest and most elaborate boat houses. The large houses continued all the way to Knoxville.
Not in the "mansion category" but obviously a University of Tennessee supporter was this house just as we were entering the downtown Knoxville area.
Downtown Knoxville comes into view. There are several bridges spanning the Tennessee. The first is the Southern RR bridge whose stone piers date to before the Civil War. Behind it is the concrete Henley Street Bridge used during Labor Day to serve as a launching point for a spectacular fireworks display. On the far left in this picture is a tower topped with a gold ball. This is a reminder that Knoxville is on the few U.S. cities to host a World's Fair. This one was held in 1972 and had more than 11 million visitors.
The first major landmark is Neyland Stadium, the 104,00 seat capacity stadium for the University of Tennessee Volunteers football team. During games boaters come to the game by water creating the aptly named "Volunteer Navy." I understand boats are rafted extensively off the public docks into the river at game time.
We continued past downtown four miles all the way to the start of the Tennessee River where the Holston River (on the left in this picture) and the French Broad (on the right) come together to form the Tennessee.
There is a public dock for transient boats and docking available at long time Knoxville downtown landmark, Calhoun's On the River barbecue restaurant. We tied up at the public dock and walked up to Calhoun's for lunch. Due to the delayed trip up-river from Chattanooga we only had about 2 hours to spend in Knoxville so Kendall only had time for quick walk to downtown and back before we had to shove off.
There were several statues positioned around downtown including this rower.
The city created an eight million dollar waterfront improvement. Near the public docks are these benches and artificial waterfalls. The scenic walkway extends almost three-fourths of a mile along the river to the Volunteer Landing Marina.
The waterfront walkway was clean and neat. I was amused by the fifth bullet point in these park rules. "No persons with diarrhea are permitted in the fountain." This leads to questions like "Do they have lots of problems with diarrhea in Knoxville?"
The bluffs on each side of the river leaving Knoxville are high and creates a narrow river channel. Currents were high in several spots. The water cuts through some unusual formations where rock layers are pushed up to make these patterns. This spot was at our anchorage on Poland Creek, 27 miles downriver from Knoxville.
Just upriver from the Fort Loudoun Lock we turned up the Little Tennessee River into Tellico Lake for about 8 miles before turning around. This lake has become a popular retirement destination for people from the north who come to enjoy the water, the mountains and the moderate climate.
The Tellico Lake bank on the southwest is covered with fine homes with interesting architecture and landscaping.
Further down the Tennessee is the town of Kingston. A few miles north of here the Emory River empties into the Clinch River. The Clinch begins in southwest Virginia. At Kingston the Clinch feeds into the Tennessee River.
One of Kingston's recent claim to fame is this Coal Fired Power plant and as the site of a coal fly ash retention pond spill. It was actually more like a flood of liquid ash that in December 2008, broke through retention walls of settling ponds and inundated some houses before flowing down the Emory River, into the Clinch, and out to the Tennessee. There were still some absorption booms on the sides of the Clinch River visible.
The chart shows the path of the ash slurry flow. The previous picture was the coal fired power plant producing the fly ash.
On the way downriver we stopped for a couple hours at the city dock in downtown Chattanooga to eat lunch at the Sticky Fingers Barbecue Restaurant.
This picture shows the landscape downriver from Chattanooga as we head for the area called the "Gulch." The Gulch is a narrow river valley between high cliffs and mountains on each side.
Signal Mountain looks over the Tennessee River.
Numerous TVA Power Plants are situated on the Tennessee utilizing abundant water supply and generally rural settings. Also coal fired plants can be easily supplied by barge.
This is the cooling towers of TVA's Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant the first of two nuclear plants we will see on that day.
Painted Bluff is more than 350 feet high which makes it one of the highest bluffs on the river between Puducah and here (mile 344.8). The bluff gets its name from the yellow and brown rock.
As we came into the Decatur one distinctive industry on the waterfront was this silo with the "Home of Meow Mix" painted on the side.
At Decatur, we steered the boat to the Riverwalk Marina which is in the center of the Tennessee River. This was where we left the boat to fly to Seattle to spend Thanksgiving week with our daughter, Stacy and boyfriend Nate in Seattle.
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