Checked the weather forecast which looked good, so we headed out around 7:30.  Clarksville Marina was a great stop.

Super exciting day as we were going through our first lock.  I called the lock operator, Mark, advised we were a few miles out and asked for any advice and instructions as this was our first time.  Mark was awesome and told me he would fill slowly as we ascended 27 feet.  The wall was super gummy.  Mike stayed at the bridge, and I went on the bow with a boat hook to try (unsuccessfully) to keep our fenders from the yucky wall.  This lock had a floating bollard (aka: “pin”), so your tie off went up the lock with you, rather than having to re-loop around rising bollards.

Notice how much higher the water is here:

View of the lock from the other side:

We left Mark a jar of Mike’s Zombie Sauce as a thank you for being so awesome.

Amazing how the view changed on the other side of the lock.  It is so beautiful here.

Sailed past the Riverview Restaurant (which we had read great reviews about) and decided to stop for lunch.  They have a long dock right on the river you can tie up to (and if you have dinner, you can stay the night on said dock without charge).  Southern hospitality oozed from this place.  A local elderly gentleman asked us about our boat and trip, and was flabbergasted hearing about it.  Throughout our lunch, he asked us dozens of questions.  His daughter and granddaughter were with him.  We gave them our blogsite and they promised they would keep Pops updated (he had never been on a computer).  Mike had the Friday special: fried catfish, hush puppies, sweet potato and white beans…Yum!

Ventured upriver another ~17 miles to our destination of Rock Harbor Marina.  We initially planned to stay on the downtown Nashville docks, but heard quite a few horror stories, so chose here instead.  It’s about a 10 minute Uber drive to downtown.  A Nashville couple interested in buying an American Tug (they began the Loop last year in their Grand Banks and made it to FL until circumstances got in the way) contacted Mike via the AGLCA blog and offered to drive us to provision, show us around, give us local recommendations, etc. came by Forever Friday to take a look at her.  They brought us a couple boxes of Goo Goos.  These are delicious treats of chocolate, peanuts, marshmallow, and caramel that they have been making in Nashville since 1912.

We Ubered into downtown Nashville.  Wow!  It’s like Country Vegas!  Jason Aldean was in town; perhaps that’s why it seemed there were 500,000 people in the streets.  We had heard of all the great live music, and were looking forward to that and some good BBQ.  Well, there’s a lot of bad music too.  Rooftop bars everywhere; the first one we visited was the Mellow Mushroom (I loved the name).  The musical “artist” was not going to be discovered in this lifetime.  We kept on.  Most of the music was a little too “country” (twangy) for me.  We ducked into an Italian restaurant that had a pretty good trio during a decent thunderstorm, then ultimately happened upon BB King’s Blues Club.  The band there, Hayes and The Hustle, were good.  I mean, really good!  Singer had a great voice and played a mean guitar.  He was accompanied by bass, keyboard and drums.  Played BB King, SRV, Joe Cocker, Allman Brothers, et al.  Was our kind of joint!

If you’re a country music fan and like to party, Nashville is the place for you.  There is no shortage of music and bars, for sure.  Will leave you with my favorite pic of the night…from the Wild Beaver Saloon.

Tentative plan is to stay here until Monday and see more of Nashville.  Also, hoping the thunderstorms will have mellowed by then.  Happy weekend!  M&M