Paris Landing to The Tenn-Tom

As you progress up the Tennessee River it slowly gets narrower. The Tennessee River is 2 miles wide near the KY Lake Dam.  Near the Pickwick Dam the River narrows to about 250 yards wide (although the channel is only about 100 yards wide). Parts of this river is very populated and has some beautiful home situated on the banks and cliffs along the river. Other parts of the river seem isolated and the only inhabitants are the birds.

We made a long day on Thursday and arrived at an anchorage just as the sun was setting. It was a spectacular moment pulling into an island anchorage as the light is fading from the sky. We set the anchor and settled in for a peaceful night.  Carol and Frank brought a deck of cards and refreshed me on how to play Hearts. It had been a while since I played but it came back to me pretty quick. We won’t discuss how the game came out. We had another great night at anchor.

A cold front was moving through the area. So, after two cool at anchor nights (it was in the upper 40s both nights) we decided that a night at a marina was well deserved, especially since the low temperature forecast was 31-degrees F.  Our long day on Thursday paid off and we arrived at the marina about 2:30. We needed to do some provisioning and we hoped we could visit the Shiloh Battlefield National Park. We reserved the courtesy car for 4:00 and took off toward Shiloh. 

One of the many statues at Shiloh.

We arrived at the visitor’s center just in time to catch them before they closed and talked to the park ranger briefly. He said the park itself closes at dark. It is a self-guided, self-paced driving tour. He gave us a map and said if we drive the route without getting out and stopping only at the stop signs, it is 45-minute tour. Perfect, we are about a 1 ½ hours away from last light.  We took about an hour and fifteen minutes to make the tour.  The driving route takes you on a tour of the order of the battles and has a description of the battle that took place at each stopping point. Carol read the narrative for each stopping point as we were approaching or stopping at each point. The tour is incredible. Many of the statues depict the anguish and suffering of the young soldiers. There were 23,746 casualties during the Battle of Shiloh, can you even imagine. It is truly a moving experience.

It just didn’t seem right to go to Walmart after that moving experience, but we thought we would like to eat along the trip, so off we went. Once we got our groceries, we headed back to the boat, a nice warm boat because we had electricity and we turned on the heat pump before we left.  

We made our first Lock on this leg of the journey.

Lesson’s Learned: We experienced Bernoulli’s Principle in action today.  Bernoulli's principle states that an increase in the speed of a fluid occurs simultaneously with a decrease in pressure or a decrease in the fluid's potential energy. In other words as the river got more narrow and shallow, the flow of the river increased.  We were making 7 MPH with the slight current on KY Lake.  By the time we got down to Pickwick Dam we were only able to make just over 5 MPH.  

Shiloh is truly a moving experience. It is a very well done National Park. You really get a feel for the horrors of that war.