Tennessee River Thru Paddle - Day 33 (5/13/21)

600 Down, 52 to go!

Start: River Mile: 68.5

Finish: River Mile: 48

Day Total: 21

Trip Total: 607

Today is the day. I can feel it. We are going to paddle 20 miles in the giant lake that is the Tennessee river forming what is known as Kentucky Lake. I woke this morning at 5:30 and didn’t hear any wind blowing. It was cold out, the low was 45 degrees. So, I got all my tent gear stowed away, and crawled out of my tent before 6:00am. Stoked up last nights fire embers and got the water boiling for coffee. Jon called out from his tent asking if I were out of my tent? Nope, I replied. Are you making coffee he asked? Nope again I said. Kind of his running joke but turned on him this time.

Even though I was up early we still only managed to be on the water by 7:15 am. Not bad, but I thought for sure we’d (meaning me) would be ready earlier than that. Still it was nice to be making progress that early. There was not a cloud in the sky this morning. We had 3 miles to paddle to get to the highway bridge

Gorgeous scenery today

were we planned to cross over to the left side of the river. We made that distance without any issues, in about an hour. We discussed the best spot to cross, which at this point was about a mile and a half wide part of the river. The water didn’t look to bad so just under the bridge we started to cross. 

It couldn’t have been more that 10 minutes in that we realized the waves were bigger than we thought. So we changed direction and attacked them at an angle, still trending to the far shore. As the wind and waves continued picked up, we kept having to angle deeper into the wind to keep from getting swamped. At some point after 45 minutes of battle, which had not gotten us much closer to the far shore and with a barge tow now coming up river, it was time to bail and work our way back to the shore we had started on, river right. 

The wind for a change was as advertised, 5-10 out of the North. So, buy keeping to the right side river bank the paddling was actually pretty nice. Our pace was not great, at a bit over 2 mph, but we could do it without a screaming wind in our face. As with yesterday, the waves were bigger than the actual wind would have you expect, but on a long lake like this, the waves build and stack up on one another. 

We just kept at our steady pace, hour after hour. Twice we came across people fishing, and in both cases they asked if we were fishing. Nope, just paddling through we’d say. “Where are you headed?” They‘d say? “Paducah” We’d say. “In those things? (Our boats)” would be the response. When we added that we were on day 32 and we had started in Knoxville they were shocked. We know this is an unusual trip, but helpfully with all the work Tennessee RiverLine are doing, it will become much more common. 

Love this campsite

After 9 hours of solid paddling we made it to river mile 48 and found a great pebble beach site to camp on the shore of Land Between the Lakes Park. This is probably our last wilderness site of the trip so that makes it special. The view from camp is amazing and the bonanza of drift wood will make for a perfect campfire.

Working on the blog post

Tomorrow, we will get as far as we possibly can. If all goes perfect, we will make it to Kentucky Lock & Dam at RM 22 by the end of the day. That would allow us to paddle into Paducah sometime Saturday afternoon. If we don’t make it to the the Dam, we will likely have to finish on Sunday with a 5-10 mile dash to the Ohio river. Only time and the Tennessee River know for sure.