Tennessee River Thru Paddle - Day 8 (4/18/21)

Southern Hospitality...or NOT!

Start: River Mile: 500

Finish: River Mile: 478

Day Total: 22

Trip Total: 172

We woke up to chilly and soggy surroundings this morning. The condensation made for a very wet pack up. With cold stiff fingers, made worse from the condensation, it took me a while to get my body loosened up. Unlike yesterday where I dressed for the conditions at present, today I dressed for conditions I expected in the next 2-3 hours. Aside from being slightly chilly when the sun was behind the clouds, I was very comfortable all day.

We launched this morning with Chattanooga 36 miles away. Our goal was to not just cut that distance in half, but paddle as far as we could so we would have less mileage to cover tomorrow. In the end we covered 22 miles so tomorrow we have 14 miles to get to downtown Chattanooga. We hope to get there in time for lunch.

In order to make miles on the current less pool, we opted for a floating lunch. We had left over smoked turkey and Havarti cheese so we had some very tasty sandwiches. We had the wind at our back so even though we weren’t paddling, we were still making distance. 

When reviewing the map, looking for a place to camp, we noticed that there was a Tennessee State Park, Harrison Bay SP. We were 20 miles into the day, we had been on the water for over 7 hours so a state park sounded pretty good. I noticed that on the camping app OnX, there was a section of the park reserved for tent camping. We found the bay that section was on and looked for a beach to land on. We found one, and just up the bank was a grouping of 3 tent sites. Two of them were vacant and one was occupied by a family. Not knowing if someone had these sites reserved, Jon walked around and came across two ladies cleaning the restroom. He explained our situation. They said they would have to check with the Ranger, but didn’t think there was any reason we couldn’t use one of these site.

When they checked with the ranger his first response was NO, we would not be allowed to camp there. When the ladies came to our defense the ranger told us to wait and that he’d be there in a few minutes. After 15 minutes of waiting, we decided to start unpacking our boats, now knowing the sites didn’t have anyone coming tonight. We reasoned the worst that could happen was that we‘d have to pay per person, rather than the site fee. We were really beat after 7 hours on the river so getting camp set up and our gear dried out was of primary importance. We had brought two loads of gear up the site when the ranger arrived. Jon, trying to make conversation asked him, how he was doing. “Breathing” was his one word reply. 

We explained that we are through paddling the Tennessee River as part of an effort to establish the route as a National paddle trail and that it was really important to make the river friendly to paddlers. The ranger who’s name is John Radford looked at us and said, “we have contractors coming this week to cut some trees in this campground, we are not accepting reservations for camping.”  We explained that we didn’t want to reserve a site, we simply wanted to pay for a site for the night. We will be on the river by 7:00am in the morning, long before any contractor might show up to start cutting trees. His one solution (his words, not mine) was to paddle back upstream two miles to an RV park were they have tent camping. We explained that we were physically exhausted. He told us we were being unreasonable and that we should have called ahead. He said he had offered us a solution and we need to pack up our boats and leave.

We asked if we could paddle around to the next cove, where there was no official camp site and do a wilderness camp? No, that would be trespassing he said, stating “This is my park and I patrol it and would  force us to leave if he found us. Let me state for the record that John Randford was wearing a bullet proof vest and caring a 9mm side arm. He looked a lot more like a SWAT team member that a park ranger, who’s job it was to help visitors to the STATE of TENNESSEE’s park, (not his) and who’s tax dollars as a citizen of Tennessee I pay for. It’s such a shame that he had such a narrow view of what his role is and was. It’s especially  embarrassing when compared to the total strangers who have been so helpful on this trip. There where other camp grounds in HIS park that did not have tree removal scheduled. It would have been simple for him to load our gear into his empty government issue pick up truck and transport us to a site he could approve of. Instead he did literally the least he could do and pass our situation off to an vague and uncertain third party. 

After spending 30 minutes re-loading our boats, we stiffly climbed in and paddled another 2 miles to a Tennessee Valley Authority public land beach and are now peacefully camping. I will be contacting my friends at Tennessee RiverLine who have spent the last 3 years, setting up the base for the Tennessee River to be an Internationally known and respected National water trail, on par with the Appalachian Trail. We don’t need narrow minded park rangers to give people spending considerable time and money in the local economies to make them wish they had never come. That is the type of negative press that can kill an effort like this. 

OK, I’m off my soapbox. Thanks for bearing with me.