October 22, 2008: Nashville, TN

We pulled anchor this morning in Harpeth Creek and proceeded upstream on the Cumberland River.

The terrain began with acres of finished dry corn fields along the river banks and them moved to rocky bluffs. We began to see some homes that had docks on the river which we have not seen before. The countryside even afforded us a cow spotting.

We continued to see barges moving slowly along with their heavy loads. We saw several river docks where barges were being unloaded. There were huge heavy cranes with the jaws of their buckets biting into the payload and moving it to trucks on the banks.

At lunch time we pulled into Rock Harbor marina where we took on 80 gallons of fuel at $4.75 a gallon. Actually it was priced at $5.75 but Tom convinced them that it couldn’t possibly be worth that much money (since four

days ago we bought diesel for $3.64). We saw the "ugly duck" with the red face there just like the one that used to live in Montreat. Does anyone know what this is?

This afternoon, we pulled under the Lyle H Fulton bridge (I-265) to see the Nashville City skyline including the AT&T Building, alias the Bat Man Building, which is the tallest building in Tennessee. The City Municipal dock is directly across the river from the LP Stadium where the Titans NFL team plays. There is a huge red sculpture

across from us that is an abstract of the stadium itself – that’s my interpretation – what do you think? There is a lot of excitement here in town because the Titans are playing the Colts on Monday Night Football! Who knows, maybe we will stay until Monday and find us some tickets.

We walked up the ramp and by the Nashville train station where the commuter train track ends at the city stop. Across the street was the Hard Rock Café, where we went for dinner and saw a white stage suit with rhinestones that was once worn by Conway Twitty, the legendary country music singer. Conway Twitty had more #1 hits than any other singer in any genre.

There is a beautiful pedestrian overpass, the Shelby Street Bridge over the river at the dock which is brightly lighted tonight and provides a shimmering reflection below.

We had a fun evening with visitors, Keithan and Miranda, old friends who now live in Nashville. We saw the Colonel Jackson, a paddle driven, three story river boat, come by while they were here.