Bruce and Diane joined the “THIS is what” 2024 adventure on June 11 in Nashville. We spent the next few days touristing that took us on several fun outings.

While we were in Rock Harbor we met the owner of a houseboat that is years into renovations that was parked next to us in the marina. His name is Barry Walker and he is a complete hoot. He is in a wheelchair due to a horrific (we saw the pictures) motorcycle accident involving a deer about 20 years ago, but that has done nothing to quell his drive and ambition. Barry is one of those guys who sees opportunity at nearly every corner and juncture in his life, one of which is renovating his houseboat which he is currently too busy to get to…”that’s coming someday” he says.

Barry found an old abandoned building in a part of West Nashville that was full of gangs, crack houses and drug shooting galleries that the city of Nashville was going to tear down to clean up for future development. Barry went to the city and in 1986 bought the old building, the original home to Marathon Auto Works (1910-1014), which was the first factory to totally manufacture automobiles in the southern United States until GM made the Saturn in 1990.

With a complete renovation designed to preserve the historical and architectural significance of the building, Barry created Marathon Village. Marathon Village is a thriving historical museum and community center for commercial, performing and visual arts creating space for affordable work studios, unique retail shops, commercial artists, performing arts and entertainment, food and drinks and event spaces. One of the shops is the retail store Antique Archeology, the store for the guys from the TV show American Pickers. There are also two distilleries, of which we sampled many offerings and bought just as much, yup, we live on a boat…’nough said.

We stopped by the office, which is across the street from the Village, and chatted with Barry for a little while where he took us on a tour of his current project, renovations of that building which includes a gorgeous and massive hand made iron bar made from beams, steal and even random tools he has collected through the years which will be centerpiece of his new event bar and restaurant. The little we know of Barry, that will be as spectacular as what he has created not only at Marathon Village, but at many other places around the south.

Barry has also spent a lot of time finding and gathering as many of the original Marathon automobiles and pieces and parts as he can find. This is one of his rooms where he shows the cars. He leaves them essentially as he finds them and displays them as is. Michael, Diane and Bruce are in the left side of the picture.

From Marathon Village, we headed to The Grand Ole Opry. For those who do not know, The Grand Ole Opry is a regular live country music radio broadcast on WSM in Tennessee which was founded in 1925 and was originally called WSM Barn Dance then in 1927 became The Grand Ole Opry. Live audiences come to see up-n-coming as well as known artists perform on stage for the radio show 2-5 nights a week depending on the time of the year. Membership in the Opry is country music’s crowning achievement.

From Nashville we headed, this time down the Cumberland River, back to Clarksville, TN. The ride was pretty smooth and only a few logs to miss. Along the way we came upon a group from another Nashville marina who were also traveling down river to Clarksville and beyond to Green Turtle Bay for a few days outing. The nice thing about that trip was this time the Cheatham lock was waiting for us so we did not have to encounter another 2 1/2 hour wait like we did on the way upriver.

We stayed in Clarksville for 2 nights so that we could take in more touristing. We Ubered into the newly renovated heart of old historical Clarksville and stopped into a highly recommended bar and grill for drinks and apps before heading out on foot to explore.

The Customs House is an 1898 structure constructed as a Federal Post Office and Customs House to jointly handle large volumes of domestic and foreign mail, as well as government business created by the area’s international tobacco trade.

From Clarksville we headed to an anchorage for one night as we continued down the Cumberland River. The temperatures have been extremely high, 105 for two days in a row and in the 90’s generally now with outrageous humidity which caused us to have to run the generator all night so we could run the air conditioners. Our generator is VERY LOUD thereby making it an awful night for sleeping. Therefore, our shipboard travel guy has had to switch gears and cross off anchoring, which we were planning on doing about every other night, and get reservations at marinas along the way so we can plug in and run the AC’s. Since we are essentially traveling “off season” for loopers we don’t have any competition for transient dockage…yet. Lopper season starts in these parts in late Octoberish.

We are currently headed up the Tennessee River towards Chattanooga, where we will be over the 4th of July (hence the hat) holiday weekend. Bruce and Diane have extended their trip with us by another week so they too can travel to Knoxville and up to the stick in the river that designates the Tennessee River Headwaters, that should be interesting. From there Bruce and Diane will be driving back to Nashville, a 30ish day boat journey which will take them about 2 1/2 hours by car to make, to fly back to So. Cal. We will be hanging out there for a little while longer then heading south of Knoxville to Fort Louden Marina to put the boat up for a month when we will be flying back to So. Cal. for 3 weeks.

We are entering the cut through in The Land Between The Lakes from the Cumberland River to the Tennessee River on Father’s Day June 16, 2024

Bruce and Michael enjoying a little cool breeze deck hand down time after gathering lines and bumpers from our overnight stay in Paris Landing Marina in a Tennessee State Park in Buchanan Tennessee.

Diane all windblown from her manning the Captain’s chair while I have been down in the salon doing this blog. She has done well over the last hour or so as we have not hit a single bridge, channel marker, log or oncoming barge on her watch.

Having Bruce and Diane onboard has been a blast and along with the much better weather and cleaner waters, my head is in a much better place than it was a month or so ago. This truly is a wild and, really most times, a fun and rewarding way to live!

Everyone, please think about joining us along the way. There is only a short time left to enjoy the “THIS is what “Great Looper Adventure and we always have such an enjoyable and great time with others traveling with us. It will not disappoint you, I promise. Welp, that’s all for now. Check back in a little while for further updates to the goings on. Love to all, Gina and Mike