Heading to Chattanooga

On 10/17/14 We left Joe Wheeler State Park and decided to take a side trip with Attitude Changer (Barb and Ross) and continue up the Tennessee River to Chattanooga.  It's two hundred miles up and took four days.  Our stops were Ditto Marina in Huntsville, Goose Pond Marina in Scottsboro, AL,  a free dock at the Shellmound Recreation Area and we went through two locks.  Another reason we wanted to go up the Tennessee River is the changing of the fall colors of the foliage.  We made it to Chattanooga with no problems and picked up the rental car as soon as we arrived.  We had tickets to visit the Grand Ole Opry on Tuesday, 10/21/14.  Early next morning we all left and after arriving in Nashville we dropped Chloe off at Dog Topia.  We don't like to leave her, but made sure it was a top quality facility.  We were even able to watch her on a webcam during her play time with the other dogs.  We stayed for a while to make sure she would be okay and then we all went downtown to check out Nashville.  If you want a pair of cowboy boots or need a place to eat or drink, this is the place for you.   We went to the Wild Horse Saloon and ordered lunch and took some good pictures of the horses.  We then checked into our hotel and got ready for our night at the Grand ole Opry.   We saw several groups including Del Rio, Lee Greenwood, and Keith Urban.  What a fantastic show! Next day we picked up Chloe, who was really happy to see us, and headed back to our boats with a side trip to the Jack Daniels Distillery.  The history of this place is really interesting. A couple of interesting fact is the county the distillery is located is a dry county.  You can not buy alcohol anywhere except the distillery!  The town of Lynchburg has a population of 400 and Jack Daniels employs 300.  Next day Jan and I went into the town of Chattanooga and walked to the Chattanooga Choo Choo.  I'm sure everyone over sixty has heard that expression.  At one time it was a train terminal that most trains traveling south went through Chattanooga.  Now the train terminal is the hotel lobby and most of the rooms are half of a rail car they turned into a room.  We found the city of Chattanooga was full of restaurants and a lot of things to see and do.  The next day we headed back to Aqua Yacht Harbor in reverse order of our previous blogs.

Scenes along the Tennessee River

This is a Coast Guard boat that maintains the channel markers

Attitude Changer

Volley ball net in along the river bank

Nashville must be the capital of boot stores

Scenes of downtown Nashville

Wild Horse Saloon

Horses are upside down on the ceiling

Meet my new friends

If you ever go to Nashville, you have to go here.

Lee Greenwood

Keith Urban

Lynchburg Tennessee (Home of Jack Daniels)

Single Barrel 

Bottling the Single Barrel

Jack on the rocks

This is the safe that eventually led to his demise 

The reason Jack is only produced at this one location, the spring water

Home of the Moon Pie

This is a miniature train display at the hotel

Cool detail

Sunset on the Tennessee in Chattanooga

Scenes along the river on the way back

This was some sort of floating Amphitheater