M/V ILLUSIONS                              TX TO TN TO TX CRUISE TRIP 3 SUMMARY July 25-August 3, 1998 Chattanooga, TN to Grand Rivers, KY      The plan for Trip 3 was to descend the Tennessee River past Yellow Creek, where we first entered the river, to near its mouth at the Ohio River.  The best marina for us to leave the boat was actually on the Cumberland River, but at that point we were close to the ends of both rivers at the Ohio.      Trip 3 was 10 days long, six days traveling from Chattanooga to Grand Rivers, and 4 lay days.  We covered 460 miles and ran the engines 34 hours.  We still had the overheating problem.  We had again lost all our food due to a power outage and no one to check it and turn the power back on.      We started out the trip with a whitewater adventure on the Ocoee River about an hour’s drive from Chattanooga.  It was a lot of fun.  We had some rain and fog, and we hit another piece of drift after leaving Chattanooga, but no damage was done.  I changed the Racor filters at Guntersville, AL, which made us too late getting into Huntsville to see the space museum.      Our 220-volt, 50-amp shore power cable burned itself out in Huntsville, but we were able to repair it at Aqua Yacht Harbor.  Angela got a cold and got over it on the trip.  We met Fred Myers, author of several good cruise-guide books, near their home in Florence, AL and had dinner with them.  One of our VHF radios quit working, and we removed it at Aqua Yacht Harbor to send it to Raytheon for repairs.  We used their courtesy van for a run into Corinth, MS to the Wal-Mart for oil and other supplies.  We enjoyed some good food in that area.      We enjoyed seeing a new lake, for us, which was Kentucky Lake.  It took two days to get from one end of it to the other.  We saw Land Between the Lakes, but did not visit.  We ate a pork chop at Patti’s in Grand Rivers, a cruisers’ obligation (and privilege).  Green Turtle Bay Marina was very interesting, large, and very accommodating.  We left the boat there in the hopes they could fix our overheating problem, and they did.      We saw beautiful scenery along the Tennessee River.  We had no problems with the locks or the railroad bridge on that trip.  The weather varied from cool to hot, with rain, some fog, and some sunshine.  It was a short but very nice trip.