Kayaking - Hamilton Creek Marina - Moonlight Paddle without our IDs

Hamilton Creek Marina                                 4 miles, Total  330.6
July 31 with Paddle Adventures Unlimited
Beatrix and 6 other paddlers
Put in at Hamilton Creek Marina, out to Shipwreck Cove Restaurant, 2 miles out, 2 miles back

PAU has a moonlight paddle every Thursday evening.  It's a bit of a drive to get down there and I only did it once before with Ethan.  Beatrix texted and said she was going, and knowing that my summer was almost over, I immediately said "yes, I'll go".

Lake paddling is different than river paddling.  There is not a current in a lake and you have to constantly paddle.  But 4 miles wasn't long, and it was a paddle where I wished it was longer.  It was a beautiful evening.  It was a group of friendly people.  And once we got out to Shipwreck Cove Restaurant, we had dinner.  Darn - had we known, we would have brought our IDs and had a drink.  Not only do the people eat well at this restaurant, but so do the fish.  Oh well, maybe next time.  Although I'm not too sure I'd want to paddle after having a cocktail. The catfish swimming under the restaurant dock were huge!    The best thing about this paddle is coming back at dusk.  We all put lights on our kayaks and it's just beautiful.  The lake is quiet, the moon is out, the world just seems more beautiful and at times like these, I wish I lived on a lake!

Such a different outlook!

Kayaking - Harpeth River/Narrows - Amanda's SendOff

Harpeth River Narrows                                                              5.9 miles,  Total 326.6
with Rachel, Amanda, Brittaney and Dick
5.9 Max Speed, 2.7 Moving Avg. Speed, 2.0 Avg Speed



The girls and Richie got back from their Chicago trip and Amanda and Brittaney agreed to go paddling with me.  Happy Day for me, and even happier when Richie said he wanted to go too.  We borrowed kayaks from Dick, and Dick joined our group.
It was a great day, mostly because I knew days with my kids were becoming less and less.  We had a nice relaxing day.  About halfway through, we stopped and had lunch on a bank.  We paddled up the side stream to the waterfall.  Here I could tell that the water in the Harpeth was extremely low.  We had to land our boats and walk back to the waterfalls.  Brittaney climbed part way up the rock face of the wall, but not the whole way once she realized she'd have to climb back down.  After our paddle, the kids and I stopped at a Mexican restaurant in White Bluff.  The food was inexpensive and very good.  We all left there feeling extremely stuffed!

Brittaney's first time kayaking and she's a pro stopping to look at the cows!

Kayakking buddies.

Easy enough to climb up, but then how will she get down?

Kayaking - Harpeth River/Narrows - Cows in the River

Harpeth River Narrows                                5.7 Miles,   Total 320.7

The triathalon wasn't a paddle for us, and we thought we would make use of the beautiful day and paddle the Harpeth.  It was Laura's last day in Tennessee and she seemed up for one more Tennessee paddle. When we drove in, we weren't sure we'd be staying.  Every parking lot was jammed full with cars.  We didn't see a lot of people actually paddling the river so off we went.  We actually passed very few people, maybe because we didn't put in until about 2:00?  It was fun seeing the river through a 'visitors' eyes.  She says the rivers in North Carolina are more brown, and not as green surrounds the river.  The highlight for her was seeing cows in the river which she says she has never seen in NC.  We also went up to the tunnel waterfall.  The water is low and we had to dock our boats and walk back to see the falls.

Kayaking - Cumberland River - Nashville Triathalon Support

Nashville Triathalon, Water Support               Miles maybe 3,  Total 315
Scotty & Me

The challenge of this trip was actually getting our boats into the water.  We followed the directions sent out by PAU, but policemen were blocking the roads and not letting us get close to the river.  We tried both sides, and called the PAU coordinator but she couldn't really help us either.  We went back to the downtown side of the river up away from the triathalon.  We talked to a policeman and he let us go past the barricade.  We had to take our boats down the concrete steps and lift them over a fence - not an easy task!  We were with Laura, who had paddled previously with Scotty on another meetup paddle.  She is a contractor that worked at Fort Campbell this summer and brought along her kayak.  She told us about her group "Hope Floats" from North Carolina.  It's a group supporting cancer through kayak trips.  Wow, did it sound fantastic.  They go on week long paddles and once was down in the keys.  The actual support this year did not seem as hard as last year.  In fact, this year, not a single swimmer grabbed onto my kayak.  Scotty, Dick and Laura also had either none or very few people hold onto their kayaks for support.  After the race, we paddled up past 3 of the downtown bridges.  It was tough paddling both directions due to little river current and it was a windy day.  We decided not to paddle up any further, but instead loaded up our kayaks and headed over to the Harpeth River.

Kayaking - Red River - Girls Day Out

Red River                                  Miles Traveled 7, Total To Date 312
11:30-3:50
Bonnie, Mandy & Me
Put in at Red River Canoe, Take out Port Royal State Park
70's-80's, overcast in morning, sunnier in afternoon
Very little current!!!, Shallow water

This was Bonnie's first time kayaking in a long time.  She did great.   It wasn't the most pleasant of days since the water was moving so slowly and it was shallow.  We all got stuck on gravel several times.  Mandy flipped once when she pulled up to a sandbar and the bar was steeper than it appeared.  We saw one snake in the water - Mandy thought it was a copperhead.  It was brown with diamonds.  I've hardly ever seen snakes, but this is now 3 on this river!  We passed a few other people out kayaking.  We stopped probably more than halfway down and had our lunch.  All in all, it was another great day of paddling!

Touring - Wiesbaden

 We stayed at Frankfurt Airport Holiday Inn from July 16 - July 17.

We couldn't catch up to the chicken truck for lunch.


We stopped at the Haribou Gummy Bear Factory!  :)

He's saying, "Come back!"

We saw some sunflowers on the side of the road and wanted to

pull over for pictures.  Well, okay, it was me, I wanted

to pull over for pictures.

From the car window.

Richie got spaghetti-is.

I got a chocolate concoction - of course!

Packing up.

Richie got silly and didn't help much with packing! 

Good bye to our car.

We wrapped this suitcase with tape to protect souvenirs.


Goodbye German countryside!