What a difference a day makes! Yesterday freezing and today
in a tee shirt. There was quite a bit of fog on the river this morning, but the
sun quickly burned it off and we had clear sailing all day long. The winds
where quit strong today though and they peaked at 32mph.
During our travels we saw some rather interesting housing.
Along the west river bank there was a series of houses all built with 1 story
of nondescript lower level and what appears to be the full house above that. I
think it has something to do with possible water levels but all these lower
levels have doors on them, so I cannot imagine them being water tight!
On the East shore of the river the rock formations are
significantly higher and those houses do not have the same lower level. Maybe
the richer folk live on the East side? Certainly those houses are much fancier.
We had made the decision to stop at Clifton TN earlier.
Apparently there is a museum there and a cute little marina. We also wanted to
mail a letter today so we detoured for a few hours visit to this cute little
town. We forgot however that it was Sunday today and just about everything is
closed. I guess that's the price we pay for being on an extended holiday! Don't
you feel bad for us?
Clifton Marina was a very nice place and when we asked for
the various things we needed the manager/owner (not sure) first advised us of
what day it was and then offered to lend us his courtesy vehicle to go into
town to get what we needed. Then he offered to mail the letter for us the next
day and even provided us with stamps for the letter. WOW, we were not even
staying there so he had no income coming in from us. I am so impressed on both
the friendliness and the generosity of this marina. Too bad we had other plans
because I would definitely stay there. Perhaps we will go there on our next go
around.
We saw a lot of pleasure boats today and many more fishing boats but
very few Tows. We did see a pontoon parked on the river's edge and it brought
back many memories of docking the pontoon with Leo and Rachelle. We miss you
guys a lot.
After our short stop in Clifton, we proceeded to our planned
anchorage which is Swallow Bluff, but the island is actually inhabited by
goats. I figured after 32 years with a man, I would know him pretty well, but I
discovered tonight that Jim can speak goat. Imagine my surprise! I was stating
that the goats where too far away from us for me to get a picture, so he
started baying at them and they came closer and started to baa back at him. They had quite the conversation going
but Jim would not share what they said.
We also had a couple of local boaters stop by to chat for a
moment. Tennessee is a very friendly place. We need to spend some more time
here. Tomorrow however we will be going into both the state of Alabama and
Mississippi so our time in Tennessee is limited. We will not be so rushed next
time we come by here.
Mom you make me laugh! Dad I had no idea you spoke goat i'll have to learn and we'll have our own secret conversations ;-)
ReplyDeleteBtw i'm loving the photos today. Must be even more awesome in person. :-D