Tuesday September 21, 2021.
Temp: 82/69, Humidity: 67/87%, Top Wind: SE5 mph, Precip: Yep! clouds and some rain, Miles Traveled: 19
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It was a leisurely get-up kind of morning. This crew likes those kinds of days. 😊. We were only going about 20 miles today, and were hoping to not travel in the rain. As we meandered out of the yacht club basin about 9:00, it really was a narrow-through-the-trees kind of channel, even with high water!
It’s a nice little secluded basin, and very protected, which was nice. And there really weren’t many bugs! Bonus points for Commodore Yacht Club!
Ah ha! This was the entrance from the river. There is a sign that I didn’t see before.
As we cruised along on our way to Nashville, there were some residential areas along the way. This one made us laugh. You can’t see it very well, but right in the middle of the picture is a stairway coming right out of the rock wall out to a dock! That just looked crazy.
Oooh! another waterfall! With the rain that we’ve been having, there were a few waterfalls, and several creeks that were pouring water into the river.
From a distance, this old railroad bridge looked really strange. Upon closer view, it was just rotated and sitting in the open position.
There was a lot of trash and debris in the river, and the current was running over 2.5 mph. We were having a hard time going 7mph.
TA-DA! We found the city!! I don’t know what water levels usually are here, but this air height of 65’ looks pretty normal, although it looks like there has been higher water at the 60’ level based on the dirty sign. It isn’t anywhere near the low water that we’ve seen on bridges farther down stream.
We passed under this railroad bridge and it was not very wide! It made us take a second thought to how tows get through here. They are definitely not going to push something three wide up or down the river around here!
Do you see the “Batman” building? That’s the AT&T building, but around here it is known as the Batman building with its tall bat ears sticking up. If you look down at the river, there is a tow with barges that is sideways in the river under the bridge. The river curves to the left up there, and he was skating his barges around the corner. There used to be a city dock on the right…. but a tow took it out about seven years ago. The outside of a tight corner is just not a good or safe place to have a dock!!
We knew we were getting close to the city dock because we know that it is located right by the Tennessee Titans Stadium.
Somewhere up there on the left…. we know that the pedestrian bridge crosses over the dock, so it has to be in there somewhere just beyond the strange rollerl-coaster-track looking art.
YAY! We found it! The Metro electric guys were here on the dock working on the electrical, and said they would have it up and running before the end of the work day. Sweet deal! It was pretty warm and humid, so we were happy to hear that we’d get to have some air conditioning today.
This is our location. Pretty great locaiton, really! It’s an easy walk to downtown and all of the action, but we aren’t in the middle of it. The Eric Clapton concert tonight is in the white oval building at the bottom of the picture. Easy stroll from here.
Sure enough – the Metro guys powered up the pedestals on the dock around 12:30, and we got plugged in and a/c turned on! YAY! They installed some new GFI system, or something like that, and some boats tend to pop the breakers on them pretty easily. We plugged in and turned things on, and all systems seemed to be good! 👍
I didn’t read the plaque about the significance of the weird roller-coaster track art. It’s part of the Cumberland Park that is right here along the waterfront.
We are the only boat here today. I did meet Andrew and Ernie who work for the dock management company. They said there would be more boats later this week, with a Titan’s home game this coming weekend.
We really are right on the outskirts of the parking lots for the stadium, but we haven’t seen anybody around. We put everything inside the boat and locked everything up. There is a four-digit tumbler padlock and chain that secures the gate, but a person could easily climb over it if they wanted to. At least it keeps people from just wandering down and fishing and meandering around the boats. But seriously, we have not seen anybody around. I’m sure this weekend will be another story!
We trucked across the pedestrian bridge and found ourselves a barbeque joint on Broadway among all of the bars and music. Jack’s BBQ is a narrow little joint right next to world famous Tootsie’s bar. We went in and got in line. It’s the kind of place where you just order at the kitchen counter, they box up your food, provide your drink, and you go find a place to sit down. There was only seating at about five tables of four on the main level, so we went upstairs and found a whole second floor of tables. It’s such an odd way of using buildings, but is so common here in Nashville.
The second floor had some meat smokers where I found them pulling out smoked rib racks and briskets to take downstairs to be carved and served. There was an empty table with eight seats right next to us, and a gaggle of seven ladies, probably in their late 60’s came in and sat down. They were dressed nice and were just normal everyday kinda gals. They looked around and looked at us and asked if there was table service. We told them ‘No. Did you come up from downstairs?’. Yes, they did. ‘Did you see that line of people?’. Yes, we did, and we walked right through them and came up here. ‘That is where you order, and you bring your own food up here to eat.’ we told them. Wait, WHAT? We have to go back down stairs to order? All kinds of commotion, laughter and discussion followed. One lady said there was no way that she could do those stairs again, then she asked us if they had wine? I said ‘no, but they do have beer’. She replied with “Awe F@#k! They don’t even have WINE!“ Then she looked at me and 🤭 apologized, but then reiterated that THEY DON’T EVEN HAVE WINE?! Oh my gosh. We lost it. Kenny was laughing so hard he had tears running down his face. These women cracked us up! They asked if there was an elevator? I said I didn’t think so, but there might be a fireman’s pole, but that wouldn’t help them get back up here. 🤣. They were all laughing and carrying on and trying to figure out who was going to go order and who was going to wait at the table. The one who needed wine and could not possibly do the stairs again convinced them all that they just needed to go somewhere else for dinner, and asked us if there was anyplace else to get some ribs? 🤷♀️. We don’t know! Oh my goodness they were funny!
Back out on the street, we had about an hour to burn before going to the concert. Here’s a quick gander down Broadway. It is an amazing place on any day of the week. Every establishment that has a band, has the band situated just inside a window that opens to the sidewalk. So every establishment has music going on. When you’re inside, its loud, but not muddled up. However, out on the street, you hear twelve different bands and it is a jumbled up audible assault on your ears that requires alcohol!
We wandered and tried to find someplace that we could just go in and have a drink. It was about 5:45, so most places were busy with people eating dinner. We found ourselves in Nudie’s Honky Tonk. It is where we most enjoyed hanging out last time we were in town. It has a really long bar, and generally the music there is southern rock. We found a table in the back and just had one drink to wile away the hour. Nudie Cohn was a constume designer for many big stars like Elvis.
This was my Malibu and Diet. It was maybe a 10 oz cup, and cost $10.
Kenny tried one of their beers which was $9, I think. It is not cheap to drink in this town!
We sat down and heard one song, then it was ‘switch-the-band’ time! Dang! So 30 minutes with no band, but we got to watch all the musicians come and go. This is a crumy picture, but suffice it to say that we saw a lot of fellas walking around with their ‘gittars’ on their backs! They each would come by, either the old band coming out or the new band coming in, carrying their instrument, amplifier, and mic stand. Being a drummer, Kenny just shook his head and said – it’s way too much work! We did not see the dummers make the switch, so maybe they get to load and unload out the front door? 🤷♀️. It’s actually quite impressive to watch the entire switch in 30 minutes. During that time, the bar kind of clears out, so the clean-up crew comes through with a big rolling garbage can and cleans up all the tables and gets ready for the next round.
Within a block was the Bridgestone Arena. It is home of the local ice hockey team, the Nashville Predators. But tonight, it was set up for the Eric Clapton concert.
We walked around the whole loop inside looking at beverages. I finally settled for a water and an adult juice pack. HA!
We had really nice seats in the 100 level, straight on view of the stage. It was still quite a distance, so I was glad they had the big screens to watch. Eric Clapton played some stuff we’d never heard, and some of his classics; rock, blues, and ballads. It was a really nice evening, and we enjoyed the music!
The concert was over by about 10:45, and there were plenty of people out and about, so we walked home across the pedestrian bridge. There weren’t many people that went that way, but it didn’t feel creepy or unsafe. We were back home by 11:00 and happy that we didn’t have to try to navigate any of the traffic in town!
When we got home, the air conditioning was not running. Hmmmm 🤔. Apparently we had popped one of the breakers on the dock pedestal. Kenny flipped it back on, and everything seemed to be fine. I guess that’s something that can happen pretty easily with these new GFI breakers that were installed. Maybe our a/c and refrigerator both cycled on at the same time, and that drew too much amperage at the same time?
Tomorrow will be a sleep in day, and should be much cooler weather! Still a chance of rain, but that should be the end of rain for the next week or so! We don’t have any plans, so we’ll just figure it out as weather allows.