Day 17

At first we thought "wow, we haven't seen a waterfall all trip!".  Then we realized it was from an industrial source we couldn't see.  There was another dry "waterfall" nearby.

Nice.

The first clue that we were approaching civilization.

Here again, a big stadium on the river yet no attempt to take advantage of it or provide more access.

Next time we're staying here, right next to the Riverfront Landing.  We chose Rock Harbor because it was protected and downtown was not.  Here, the no-wake was zone was marked and all appeared calm.

Shelby Park boat ramp - this ramp had a pile of rocks about 15' into the water, preventing us from getting enough depth under the trailer to pull the boat out.  We need about 30' of ramp in the water and a depth of 4' at the end.  The next two ramps, all made by the Army Corps, were not deep enough.  One dropped off sharply.

What fun!

CU-216 Just below the Old Hickory lock and dam is a long somewhat steep ramp with just enough depth to do the job and the boat was back on the trailer. 

It would have been great to use the ramp just above the dam but there was a two hour wait for barge traffic to clear the lock.

Now back to Chattanooga by road and after a few stops (like this Sears parking lot) we end up at the Georgia Welcome Station at 11PM, just in time for the rest rooms to CLOSE!  We pull into the truck parking area which is almost full.  We set up camp in the Adventurecraft and fired up the generator and the air conditioning for a few hours of sleep.

"Wait", you say, "how did the truck get from Chattanooga to Nashville?."  I have to thank my long time friend Dean Aldridge for spending all day and into the night helping us with that.  Thank you, Dean.

Next: Day 18 - The drive home

All photos and text Copyright 2007 Paul Kempter, except for the charts which are Army Corps and Google Earth pictures.  They contain watermarks.  Please give credit if you copy to your personal non-profit web site.  High resolution copies of the photos are available for licensing (usually free to non-profit organizations).