Knoxville -- The Spears Have Arrived....8/27/2018

It's Monday, August 27 and we are prepared, excited and anxious to reach our "bucket list" destination of traveling the entire length of the Tennessee River -- which happens to end just past downtown Knoxville.  It's 81 degrees, sunny and a nice Northern breeze....3 ingredients to ensure a perfect travel day.  At 10:30 EST, it's time to un-tie and "get this party started", leaving Ft. Loudoun Marina and head for Volunteer Landing Marina in downtown Knoxville.

As we leave the marina, we start to see some enormous homes.  Unlike Watts Bar Lake where the homes are imbedded in the hills and trees, the homes on Ft. Loudoun Lake are very large and on 5-acre estate lots.  There are few trees and the yards are perfectly manicured with lots of nice landscaping and grass that has been cut to have those stripes on it like a baseball field.  Clearly these home owners like to have their yards mowed!!  They are also in more of a subdivision setting on this lake.  We presume it is so densely populated because of its close proximity to Knoxville.  Below are pictures of the shoreline and some of the very large homes.

 I had to start with this picture of our new Vol Navy coozies and "River Life" coozie….

Here's the first Airplane Hanger we saw on the River

Look at this fancy "stone" boat garage -- wow

Oh My -- an escalator for their boat to be elevated into the garage.  Large Patio also.  wow/wow

We are now arriving into the city limits of Knoxville.  The landscape is peppered by UT Medical Center and, of course, the campus of UT Knoxville.  We arrive at 3PM at Volunteer Landing Marina in downtown Knoxville.

It's 3PM on Monday, August 28, 17 days into our journey, and we have officially arrived in Knoxville and completed a 606 mile journey that completes our goal which is to travel the entire Tennessee River We still have to travel back to our home which will be another 606 miles and we have no plan on when we will return and what our next excursion will be.  We want to explore several lakes and additional waters in NE Tennessee.

We will spend the next 2 days getting familiar with downtown Knoxville and also scoping out what our plan and strategy may be when we participate in Vol Navy on Saturday, September 8. During a home UT football game, there are typically 200-300 boats in the river tied up or just anchored out.  This will be an experience for us -- so if the game is on TV -- be sure to look for us.  This marina in downtown does not allow short term boats to stay at their marina during UT football season so we will travel 15 miles back on the TN River and stay at another marina in Knoxville called Volunteer Cove.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Knoxville and we will update our "on-land" experience in a different blog story.  

Love my Captain.....Love Cloud Nine.....