#64! Paducah to Iuka!

HOT! Hot hot hot. When we pulled out of Paducah it was close to 100 degrees. As long as we were moving it wasn’t too bad, but while waiting at the Olmstead Lock we dropped the hook and fired up the generator and the A/C. I don’t think we’d ever done that before. Our first stop after Paducah was the Kentucky Dam Marina for two nights to relax and run the A/C on high!

Then we took a short hop over to Green Turtle Bay Marina, a well-known Looper hang-out, where we enjoyed what would be our last docktails on this Loop, with SlowPoke, Eksit Strategy, Resolute, Assisted Living, and Makin’ Hay.

Green Turtle Bay Marina has some fabulous amenities, we even enjoyed a swim while there.

There, I did some route planning for the last two hundred miles of our Loop. Kentucky Lake is gorgeous, a man-made lake with coves, inlets, and marinas all over the place. We spent the next week or so anchoring out one night, then stopping in a marina, then anchoring out, back and forth all the way to Iuka. The moves were all very short, ten to thirty miles a day. We really enjoyed that! No rush getting up in the morning, either at anchor or in the marinas. We stayed up to watch the stars when it was clear, and seriously enjoyed the dramatic weather change. From high 90’s to mid 70’s in two days! It was a great way to decompress after the long runs on the rivers, and a wonderful way to wrap up our year of cruising.

MoonShine. It stretches across the black water like a path of hammered gold flakes, shimmering with a clarity so fierce it seems solid enough to grasp in your hand. Yet the moment you reach down to scoop up that brightness, your fingers break only cold lake water, leaving the light laughingly intact and entirely beyond your reach. It is the quiet, maddening truth of so many things in life—ephemeral as a sigh, unpossessable as the tide, and yet so breathtakingly present that you have no choice but to stand still and let it dazzle you anyway.

As we made our way upriver (The Tennessee flows north here, one of the few major rivers in the US to do that) we stopped at Birdsong Marina and Pearl Farm. The only fresh water pearl farm in America. Rhonda gave us the grand tour of the museum, where we learned the entire back story of how a pearl farm came to be along the banks of the Tennessee River.

(I’ll try to keep it short.) On Kentucky Lake in Camden, Tennessee, the pearl farm at Birdsong Resort & Marina was opened by John Latendresse, who spent two decades adapting Japanese culturing techniques to native mussels. This was basically a guy who was convinced he could raise pearls in Tennessee, and through force of will made it happen. (His wife is Japanese, probably where and how he heard about it.) By 1984 he was producing the first and still only commercially successful harvest of freshwater cultured pearls—now the official Tennessee State Gem. (Gem? We have an official state gem? Who knew.) The operation is still ongoing, mostly family and friends.

They start the process by prying open a native washboard mussel and inserting a tiny mother-of-pearl bead implant. The mussel then begins to coat it in layers of “nacre” over the years, and at some point they haul the mussel out and harvest the pearl. The number of years determines the size. The mussels are kept in wire cages and left in the water, no feeding them or any other care, just patience. They have several hundred thousand in the water at a time. I always thought a pearl of any kind was started when a grain of sand got into a oyster or a mussel, but in reality it is usually a small insect of some kind. The enormous pearl necklace that Elizabeth Taylor wore, the “La Peregrina”, probably has a tiny crustacean at the center.

We saw some odd and interesting sights along this stretch of the river. This is an abandoned grain loading station.

And this, some kind of abandoned TVA tour boat, long forgotten and just taking up space.

As I’ve said before, these updates only cover a small percentage of what is actually going on. It has been fun, deciding how much and what to put on here, but in the interest of brevity, we did leave out a few things. Like, how, as we went down the rivers, I practiced my Tarzan yell, which annoyed and amused Cheryl to no end. I used to have a pretty good rendition back in the day, but I can no longer get even close to Johnny Weissmuller.

Nor did we tell you, when we were anchored out, how I liked to take my showers in the aft cockpit after dark, communing with the stars while I washed off the day’s exertions. Or how I talked Cheryl into enduring some of the movies I picked out, ones with aliens, monsters, explosions, old classics, even some cartoons, you know, the good stuff. (I watched my share of Hallmark movies with Cheryl, as a trade.) Or how we sang along to golden oldies on the radio for miles and hours while underway. Oh, there were a lot of things that didn’t make it to the updates, but we hope they were entertaining anyway. Our enduring thanks to those who came along on this trip, that greatly added to our enjoyment. It is fun to share!

There were a lot of “lasts” on this trip. We may do some of them again, sure, but they will never be on our first Great Loop again. Maybe they’ll be on our way to the Bahamas or something? Who knows!

And we had some gorgeous sights in this last stretch. Like, the moon over MoonShine. Thanks to Resolute for this one.

And the next morning’s sunrise:

And the morning mist on the water. Well, Cheryl says it’s mist, I say it is the spirits of all the people who have drowned at sea over hundreds of years…

Our last anchorage was just across the river from the marina, and only a short run to Yellow Creek Waterfall, a small anchorage where you can anchor next to a waterfall. So we took the dingy over for a swim and some sightseeing:

On Monday, September 28th, 2026, 2:10 PM, we officially crossed our wake! A day or two ahead of schedule. What a moment. Thanks to Makin’ Hay for this picture.

And to Pandion for this one, taken at the exact spot where we crossed our wake, and also at the junction of three state lines, so that the boat was in Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi at the same time!

The route, as tracked by our NEBO app:

Cheryl: It’s Hard to Say Goodbye

The Swedish Fish are gone. The M&Ms and Little Debbies are gone. I’m down to my last roll of laundry quarters and 6 Tide Pods. The cleaning supplies- no longer propped in place by the multitudes. 15 boat cards remain in the box of 250. The leaves are turning. Only a package of walnut meats and a bag of grated mozzarella remain in the freezer. The last bag of coffee has dwindled to a few days’ supply. The last tube of toothpaste is 1/4 full. We’ve passed our last barge, anchored out our last time, departed our last marina at sunrise, marveled over our last eagle, and thanked our last lock master. It can mean only one thing- our Loop has come to an end.

Today we crossed our wake after 326 days and 5681.84 miles on the water. I’ve been choked up all day. Watching Butch pontificate off the bow of the boat and thanking our final lock master put me in tears. I’m so grateful for this opportunity and to all the people who have made it so special for me. Along the way, I’ve made new lifelong friends and have had the opportunity to spend quality time with old friends. I’ve shared 100 square feet of living space with a man I’ve come to love, respect, and adore in an entirely new light. And every day along the way, I’ve learned more about myself.

Today, a friend asked me how I feel about this adventure coming to an end. I replied that I feel like I’m dropping off my youngest child at college. Because after all, there’s been a third life on this trip- a living, breathing, mobile companion. Initially, I knew nothing about her- how to treat her, care for her, and handle her. But over this incredible past year, I’ve learned so much about her. I’ve learned what she sounds like when she’s not doing well, how to handle her the way she needs to be handled, and that she flourishes when a simple prayer is spoken over her each morning. In response to the care and respect we’ve shown her, she’s kept us warm, dry, safe, and happy. We’ve shared stories, laughter, and a few tears. But now it’s time for her to move on- for her to start her next chapter and us ours. We’re clearing her out, cleaning her up and dropping her off someplace she’s never been, someplace where her future begins. We know she’ll continue to thrive and have wonderful adventures- with or without us. We can only hope that the people who come into her life love, respect, and care for her as much as we have. They say that the happiest two days of a boat owner’s life are the day they buy a boat and the day they sell it. I beg to differ. I will desperately miss my magic carpet. ~C

Butch: So now we will unload the boat and head home, to a house that doesn’t move, to plumbing that never runs out of water, and to a world we haven’t been a part of for almost a full year. I haven’t driven a car, other than short rentals maybe twice, in a year! I’ve said this before; living on a boat this long is like living on another planet. It is not just a slight adjustment, it’s a life-style that centers around raw nature and issues like route planning that just don’t exist in the land world. The crazy thing is, I think we both miss some of the stability of land life! Even so, I am really, really going to miss this.

We are working on one more update, a final collection of thoughts and impressions, statistics and trivia. That will come out once we’re home and have a chance to rest up and acclimate. We hope you will come back for that one!

“A man who crowds his life and dies young has lived longer than one who grows old sitting in tame sameness.”

“It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.” David Stiendl-Rast

“I am thankful for nights that turned into morning, friends that turned into family, and dreams that turned into reality.”

“Boats are the nearest thing to dreams that hands have ever made.”
Robert Rose

“Wanderer, your footprints are the only road and nothing more.
Wanderer, there is no road; You make the road by walking.
As you walk, you make your own road, and when you look back you see the path you will never travel again.
Traveler, there is no road;
Only traces of the ship’s wake.” Antonio Machado