Downtown Chattanooga Sunset Kayak Tour (Hamilton County, Tennessee)

 

My final stop for the day in Chattanooga takes me back out onto a Kayak to leisurely paddle down the Tennessee River at dusk. Meeting up with our REI guides, all of us choose our boats and life jackets, while they go over some basic safety information. Seeing these boats, some very similar to the one I sold before leaving Reno, just re-motivates me to purchase a new one. I honestly didn't realize that kayaking would be such a popular activity in Atlanta, but it's even more popular here than it was in Reno.

As this is intended to be a very slow paddle with the current of the river, I forgo using a spray-skirt and just jump in my boat as one of the guides gives me a push into the water. After everyone has launched, we begin our lazy trip down the wide river. We see some wildlife along the way, mostly cranes doing their best to find a meal in the shallow shoreline waters. The dam just above us was spilling a little water into this section of the river, giving us just a enough of a current to not require much paddling and still be able to maintain a nice speed. We do a little paddling though. 

It's nice and quite out here, even though we are within the city itself. The Tennessee River passes through downtown doing a couple of interesting bends as it snakes through, but we will only traverse one of these. As we continue on, I realize that I forgot to start my GPS track once again and will have to estimate the distance we travel.

As the sun sets in the west, I'm able to get some very nice views of it over downtown. There is still some cloud cover, but not enough to spoil the view. As night settles in, temperatures drop a little, but never to the point of getting cold.

Eventually, we make it back to our landing point and make our way back onto dry ground. I struggle to maneuver this 14.5 foot boat a little bit and require some help from the guides to get turned around correctly, but it's no matter and soon we say our goodbyes and head our separate ways. I estimate we paddled about 6.5 miles, but it was incredibly easy and a nice way to end the evening in a new city.