November 1: Clifton, TN

Another cold wake-up this morning and outside we were fogged in. But we had eggs over-easy and waffles as our Saturday celebration and watched the sun shine through.

It was obvious that the water is extremely low in the Tennessee River. We are now passing many summer vacation places with their floating docks lying on dry ground. We also saw one story houses built on stilts that were actually 3-story structures. Apparently they are prepared for the flooding. We also passed a dry docked tug boat that looked like it had been salvaged to serve as a field office, maybe?

We pulled out of the channel and anchored out for a picnic lunch, enjoying our sandwiches sitting in the sun on the back deck. It was very quiet and you could hear crickets from the shore line, interrupted by the occasional fishing boat speeding by us. We soaked in the beauty of God’s earth and prayed for our friends and family at home.

This afternoon we pulled into Clifton Marina for the night. They advertized a courtesy car, and we want to drive to Jackson to see Tom’s cousin tomorrow. Anxious to stretch our legs a little, we took our bikes into nearby Clifton to see the sights. The sights turned out to be a little old main street with a few stores which included a stained glass store which was fun to walk through. I was tempted to buy an antique window which was a steal, but getting it back to the boat seemed like a challenge.

The town got its name of Clifton from the fact that the main street dead ends into a cliff over looking the Tennessee River. We read a little about the history of Clifton which was established in 1840 with the building of the Clifton Turnpike. The turnpike gave the county access to the river for exporting crops. Clifton became a steamboat port, and in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s they exported timber from here for the laying cross ties for railroad tracks.

We also saw the First Presbyterian Church of Clifton. This was the only building that survived the Civil War. It had been used as a hospital during the war, and after the town was taken by the Union, it was used as a horse stable. You could see where the brick work had been torn out to widen the door during that time and later reconstructed.

We returned to the marina to try to get access to the internet, but we could never get their password to work. While on the patio, we had an opportunity to meet the retired couple on the Hilda Rose sailboat we had anchored by last night. The boat seemed to be their permanent residence as they were on their way to the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico to spend the winter. They had come up through North Carolina a couple of years ago, and indicated that they weren’t sure where they were going in the spring. They were interesting folks, and not in any hurry.

Tom hooked up the cable to the boat from the dock but could only seem to get one channel on our TV. When we asked at the office, they explained that there was only the cable box in the office and all the boats only got the one channel it was set on. So we got them to set it on CNN, but then we couldn’t change the channel after the office closed. Since Tom couldn’t get the Texas football game, we went to bed early. But we did remember to set our clocks back.