Day 7 Got The Blues

I left Joe Wheeler State Park this morning headed for Guntersville Lake.
The sunrise was spectacular.

Leaving the State Park.

Adjacent to the main lodge, the park rents cabins right on the lake. I would like to come back with my family one day.

Decatur Alabama was my next stop. Looks like they are starting to develop a riverfront area.

The Pickwick Belle

I was under this very low bridge taking some pictures when…

This train comes flying by. I don’t think that I have ever been so close to a moving train.

No hungry cats around here.

How often do you get to sunbathe while driving

The stretch of Wheeler Lake from Decatur up to Guntersville was a trip highlight.

Neat natural bridge.

See what I meant about having blues. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous.

I was able to quickly lock through onto Guntersville Lake.

One of the things I have noticed about Guntersville Lake is that all boat houses have full doors. Most be code.

My brother in law Evan came down to Scottsboro, AL and met up with me today. We don’t get to hangout as often as I would like. Excited to have a copilot for the remainder of the trip. We are staying at Goose Pond Colony. I forgot to take a photo, so I will use one of theirs.

I traveled 100 miles today. Then when Evan arrived, we ran back down river 20 miles and had dinner at a popular seafood restaurant in Guntersville Alabama.

I have also included some general information about the lakes that I traveled on today. This information came from TVA.

Wheeler Reservoir
Wheeler Reservoir is one of nine reservoirs that create a stairway of navigable water on the Tennessee River from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Paducah, Kentucky. Along with Wilson and Pickwick reservoirs downstream, Wheeler helps cover the Muscle Shoals, the rock formations that had blocked navigation on the Tennessee River.

Today, Wheeler Reservoir is a major recreation and tourist center. Along with camping, boating, and fishing, visitors enjoy the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge several miles upstream from the dam. The refuge features Alabama’s only significant concentration of wintering Canada geese.

Barge traffic on Wheeler has made it one of the major centers along the Tennessee waterway for shoreline industrial development. Private industry has invested about $1.3 billion in the waterfront plants and terminals at Decatur, Alabama, the largest city on the reservoir.

Guntersville Reservoir
Good fishing, clear waters, and the beautiful backdrop of the wooded Appalachian foothills combine to make Guntersville one of the South’s premier recreation attractions.

Crappie is the number-one sportfish, usually accounting for more than half of the total catch. Bass and bluegill are also caught in large numbers. The area just below Guntersville Dam is known for its fine sauger fishing during autumn and winter, white bass in early spring, and catfish during the summer.

The area below the dam offers unique opportunities for day hiking and caving. An easy one-mile loop trail leads by a cave used during the Civil War to mine saltpeter, a basic ingredient of gunpowder.

When TVA established the stairway of dams and locks that turned the Tennessee into a 652-mile-long river highway, the rural town of Guntersville was transformed into a major port. Several large companies now have terminals at Guntersville for processing and distributing grain, petroleum, and wood products