Green Turtle Bay Marina Destination

Last Saturday morning, August 19, we left Clarksville Marina at 8:40AM.  It was sunny and 71 degrees and low winds....a perfect day for traveling.  We had 95.8 miles to travel so we needed to pick up the pace from yesterday.  It's hard to fathom it taking 7-1/2 hours to go 95 miles -- but when you are traveling at about 12-15 MPH, that's how long it takes.....needless to say, we were hot, tired and hungry when we arrived at Green Turtle Bay at 4PM.

Cloud Nine Docked at Green Turtle Bay Marina

Along our trip, we passed several huge barges - larger than the ones we saw the day before.  We also went thru 2 "wildlife refuges", they both extended for about 10 miles each.  They had over 8,800 acres  along with nearly 250 species of birds and thousands of ducks and geese that spend the winter there.  We saw hundreds of birds -- one of the most interesting  was an "albino" Heron.  We have seen Blue Herons before, but these white ones were amazing and there were so many of them.  We also saw one bird that we gave a "8.7" score as he was flying above the water and dove straight down probably 40 feet into the water to successfully capture his lunch!!  He didn't seem to care we were traveling close enough to where we almost made him our lunch -- or "hood/bow ornament"!!  We also saw an eagle, but course our camera was not "locked and loaded" so we didn't get a picture of him. He was amazing to watch fly.

The large Barge carrying Sand

There is only one "working ferry" on the Cumberland River and it is in Cumberland City, TN  We had to stop and wait for this ferry, carrying 2 pickup trucks and 2 cars, to cross the river to the other side.  The ferry's name is "Lucille II".  Apparently she is a very busy ferry, and there aren't any bridges close by so that is the only mode of transportation if you want to "get to the other side"!!  That was quite cool to see.

Lucille II -- the Ferry

As we approached the mouth of Lake Barkley, I presumed the water would open up to a huge body of water -- while it somewhat did, the navigational buoys were not where they should have been and our GPS map on our boat stopped at the TN/KY state line -- oh crap...oh crap...oh crap.  We had to quickly re-group and pull up Garmin on our I-pad.  Thank goodness for "Plan B".....and my very organized Captain Gene!  The next 20 miles or so were treacherous...shallow water, the river channel was within feet of the shoreline....trees and other debris in the water.....that was not the most fun part of the day, but no one was thrown overboard nor yelled at, and nothing got torn up.....so it was just part of the adventure. 

They must not have a speed limit on Lake Barkley -- every boat there (whether a pontoon, jet ski, fishing boat, pleasure boat, etc) was traveling at the speed of light.  They were certainly more confident in these waters with "trees in the middle of the lake" than we were.  There were many times we looked at the depth in the middle of the river channel and it was 8-10 feet.  We are use to water being 100+ feet deep.  So this is a big adjustment for us.

Another interesting landmark was the Kentucky State Prison located right on the banks of the Cumberland River / Lake Barkley.

We were happy to reach our destination, Green Turtle Bay Resort and Marina.  We stayed here for the next 4 days.  For dinner the first night, we had a nice meal at the Thirsty Turtle restaurant.  The bath house is very nice here and much easier to take a shower in the bath house rather than in our boat (less clean up and wipe down for me)!!   We spent time Saturday morning tidying up inside the boat, getting our TV set up so we can watch local channels, cleaning up our back cuddy where all our food, clothes, tools, etc are stored in plastic tubs!!

The dock we are staying on is called the "transient" dock.  For boaters that travel, these transient docks are located close to the restaurant, office and bath houses as most folks only stay here for a few days before moving on down (or up) the river.  This time of year, there are many boaters that have started traveling south and plan to stay in South Florida or the Bahamas for the winter.  And most of these folks are from somewhere north like Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio.  We so enjoyed meeting these folks (they are known as "loopers") because they travel from the North down the Ohio River, on thru the Tennessee River, down the Tom-Bigbee River that gets them to the Gulf of Mexico in Mobile.  From there they travel east along the panhandle of Florida and stop in a Marina somewhere in South Florida or the Bahamas for the winter, then the next spring they will travel north up the east shoreline of Florida in the Atlantic Ocean, up through South Carolina, Boston Harbor, New York City, thru the Erie Canal, into Canada and back to their home. They are so interesting to talk with and we thoroughly enjoyed meeting them and spending time learning about their adventures.  Several of the couples have made the full loop 1-4 times.  They truly love traveling on their boats.

The number of sailboats was incredible.

On Monday, the slip our boat was in was the PERFECT spot to view the Eclipse.  So we didn't have to go anywhere.  The eclipse was incredible.  As it began to get dark, the birds stopped singing, the Cicadas came out and started chirping, the turtles made their "nighttime bed", and everything got so quiet.  It was an amazing experience.  

On Tuesday, Gene and I had a couples massage -- we are at a resort -- so we needed to take advantage of all it had to offer -- right?!!  It was Gene's first massage -- think he could get use to that -- we were so pampered and spoiled!!  We also experienced our first "storm" so we had to practice putting our covers on our boat to keep the water out of the boat.  

On Wednesday, our last day at Green Turtle Bay, we had a manicure and pedicure.  Also Gene's first experience.  He thoroughly enjoyed that -- he has done nothing but talk about his manicure and when he chips a nail or has a hang nail, it turns into a major ordeal!!!  He wanted to turn around and go back for a do-over when he had his first chipped nail -- I quickly introduced him to a well-known device called a "nail file" --- we were not turning around for a chipped nail!!!!   

About noon on Wednesday, we left Green Turtle Bay and moved from the Cumberland River  on Lake Barkley to the Tennessee River on Kentucky Lake.  We learned a valuable lesson not to travel more than about 40 miles a day – the 95 mile trip up the Cumberland River last week was entirely too far to travel by water in 1 day. We were headed to Kenlake Marina.

And Away Cloud Nine Goes Again....