Day 188- Nashville has been so fun

Thursday September 23, 2021.
Temp: 70/51, Humidity: 34/89%, Top Wind: NW11 mph, Precip: NONE! 👍, Miles Traveled: none

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Brrr! The temperatures have definitely dropped!! Another lovely sleep in day and I got up to blue sky, sunshine and feeling a little bit like Chilly Willy! 🐧 I actually turned on the heat! That’s another great reason to be plugged into dock power!! And I found another spider web INSIDE the boat! 🕸Grrr! We had a full complete web hanging off of the bikes yesterday morning. We figure that we brought somebody inside with the bikes when we brought them in for safe keeping while here in the city. So last night during the witching hour (just around sunset), I was surveying the bikes. I saw a spider sticking out of the end of one of the bicycle handle grips! I tried to grab him, but all I got was four legs. Drat! That left him with a body and four legs. So I sprayed our Terro spider killer into the handle, and that should have croaked him. But this morning, there was a new web over by the coffee maker. I guess I better go hunting tonight, because Miss Muffet must have a friend in here somewhere!
We had no agenda for today, but it was really nice that it wasn’t raining. I suppose we could have got the bikes out and gone somewhere, but we’ve explored Nashville and the surrounding area by car before, so it felt good to just relax and take it easy with no pressing agenda. We watched the goings-on around the waterway while I fixed bacon and eggs for breakfast. Apparently one of the guys who works for the dock management company also runs a pontoon tour boat. The Pontoon Saloon went out a couple of times today, and this was the first time we’ve really seen any people around the dock.

We decided that with the way the river is running, we are not going to continue going upstream. We had thought about going farther up beyond Nashville, through the Hickory Lock and into Old Hickory Lake. But with the strength of the current right now, and no particular destination, we decided we’ll turn around and go back down stream. With that decision made, I made reservations for two nights in Clarksville. At least this time it won’t be raining while we’re there, so we can go explore that town a little bit. After that, we’ll continue back down into Lake Barkley and stay at a different park marina. We realized today that if we don’t have any significant weather delays, we could theoretically be home in about a month to five weeks! WOAH!! 😳
Kenny made some calls today to local marinas around home to try to find a place for the Girl, and he struck out three for three. Nobody has space. 😔 We‘ll keep looking, but we may just pull Island Girl out of the water and put her on the hard in the yard at Safe Cove in Port Charlotte for a few months. We don’t know. We’re still working on what to do next when we’re done with the loop….. which is coming up FAST!!! In all reality, we likely won’t use her much if at all for the next several months. With traveling for the holidays and then we have a new grandbaby due in early February, there will be a good bit of time spent in Washington this winter. 👶💕 Perhaps pulling her out would be the best option. It would certainly the cheapest choice!

Meanwhile, back in Nashville, the sky was so clear and pretty today! YAY!! There is a nice park across the river, and we’ve been watching the water level along the walkway over there. The river is still really high and swift today. There was a guy on a jet ski that just meandered around for several hours. Then we saw a half dozen kayakers come floating down the river. We figured that the jet ski guy must be the runaway kayak retriever.

There are some log cabin type structures by the park over there, too. It’s actually Fort Nashborough. On January 1, 1780, James Robertson founded Nashville when he led his group of pioneers across the frozen Cumberland river to a place called The Cedar Bluffs. These men built a fort here called Nashborough, which would shelter the first families until Indian attacks ended in 1792. They look so out of place, but it’s so cool that they’ve been retained and taken care of to preserve some local history!!

We finally decided to hit town and listen to some music. We wandered all around and were looking for something other than just your standard bar-food menu. We settled on Blake Shelton’s Ole Red. It is a huge venue, the music was good but not so loud that you can’t hear each other, and their menu had some nice options.

We sat upstairs overlooking the stage, and had an early dinner around 5:00. Bacon wrapped meatloaf, and chicken fried steak were our choices. Yum! 😋. The band was really good, and it was fun watching them. Like many bands in Nashville, they will play requests – whether they really know the song or not! It’s part of being a musician in this competitive arena. The band called it a “live Nashville practice session”. The lead guitarist and vocalist would pull up the song on their tablets, and the bass player and drummer just winged it. You’d never know they hadn’t ever played the song before. The musicians in this town are amazing.

I think this is our only selfie to prove we were actually here in Nashville! Certainly not our best photo, but it’s all I have!

After we got home, I tried another night time shot of the city. It’s a little better than yesterdays.

And that’s a wrap for Nashville! We’ll get up and going early in the morning because we are going all the way to Clarksville. That’s 66 miles and one lock away, but with the current, we could be there in three hours, right? 😉 Not really, but it will be a lot faster than the trip coming up the river! And the weather is supposed to be down to 48* tonight (BRRRR), and a high of 76* tomorrow. We will be wearing fuzzies and blankies in the morning!! Yay for no more rain for awhile!