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From bride tribes to locals, millions flock to visit downtown Nashville.
But for Annie Klaver, there was an underappreciated way to experience the city’s beauty hiding in plain sight—the Cumberland River. A desire to connect people with nature and a passion for sharing her love of waterfront recreation led her to create River Queen Voyages in 2015, and it’s been full steam ahead ever since. As her business has grown, so have her ideas on innovative ways to bring the Broadway party riverside. With the launch of Nashville’s first ever Pedal Pontoon—in addition to three types of kayaking tours and Nashville’s only River Scavenger Hunt—River Queen Voyages provides fun-filled ways for locals and tourists alike to experience Music City from a new vantage point.
Inspired by Nature: I’m from Milwaukee originally and from that generation of you just went outside until it got dark or someone got hurt, so I’ve always loved being outside. I’ve worked my whole life. I started waitressing when I was fifteen, I was in the corporate world internationally in Europe, and then back to the U.S. I worked on Music Row, worked for a video production company, and I bought a house on the river in 2013 in Madison, Tennessee. In 2014 I was just feeling really burnt out and didn’t want to live behind a computer my whole life anymore. So, I uncharacteristically quit and started taking my kayak outside in my backyard. I was lucky enough to have direct river access and just got reconnected with nature and sort of rebuilt my broken spirits out there on the river all the time with some friends. It was just like, ‘Why doesn’t anybody use this river for recreation?’ It goes right through downtown, Nashville was founded on the river, there’s all those buildings along 1st Avenue but the entrances and all the restaurants and storefronts are on the 2nd Avenue side. So, my mission and the mission for the company is to get people using the river downtown. We want to turn Nashville into a river town, so that’s sort of how [River Queen Voyages] started in 2015. I bought an old church van and some kayaks from a guy on the Red River, and it was just me. I traded my high heels for Chacos and I was never happier. It was pretty humble beginnings and we started growing from there. We’re in our seventh season now, and this year just launched the Pedal Pontoon Party Boat and also this year we’ve added a Kayak Scavenger Hunt, which is super fun. We opened a new route in downtown Franklin this year on the Harpeth River, so we’re really just trying to create as many different experiences for people to enjoy the river as we can. It’s been wonderful.
Pedal with a View: We’ve been doing kayaking on the river since 2015, and we’d get people that kind of wanted more of a tour—something where they were guided by someone through the river— and I was like, ‘Those pedal taverns that are so popular, I wonder if they have anything like that on a boat?’ There’s a company I found in Bend, Oregon, called Cycle Boat and they sell these [Pedal Pontoons] and they’re all over the U.S. I approached them and it was a rigorous vetting process. There were several people interested in doing this in Nashville, and I guess I had the best plan and the best setup because they selected me as the vendor for Nashville. What people are excited about is seeing Nashville from the river! It’s not something people normally do and seeing the skyline from the river is so pretty. It’s just stunning. We do a 6:15 p.m. sunset cruise and it’s great because it’s light out when it starts, we’ve got these rainbow party lights on the boat, and by the end the city is all lit up and it’s reflected off the water. The General Jackson goes by and everybody waves, it’s just really joyful and really fun.
Sights to See: Nashville was founded on the river so there’s tons of river history all along the water. Just upriver from the Shelby Park boat ramp is Demonbreun Cave—Timothy Demonbreun was the founder of Nashville—and that cave is only accessible from the river, so that’s a fun little historical point to see. There’s the little lighthouse that’s just above the train bridge that’s also cool to see. Just being able to see Broadway, you can see Germantown from the river, you can see Top Golf up there, I just think it’s so exciting to be able to offer this new point of view and have fun on the river. One of the biggest inspirations of the business is the potential for water recreation downtown—it just unlocks a whole part of Nashville that hasn’t been seen from that point of view before.
Biggest Hopes: Our founding philosophy is that nature heals, and we want to connect people with nature. When you think of doing stuff in Nashville, people traditionally haven’t thought of ‘let’s go do something on the river,’ so I want that to be part of what people think about doing when they come to town. I’d like to see the riverfront develop—to have marinas here, to have bars and restaurants on the river, water taxis, to just be able to use it as more of recreation than industrial, and I think the way to do that is to work together with the infrastructure that already exists. We are very mindful about safety. All our folks are CPR first aid trained, we have a Master Captain which is a very arduous process to captain the boat, to make sure everyone stays safe. We want this to be a river town, we want this to be somewhere that we can connect both sides of the city and have it be something that is an alternative or an enhancement to all the stuff you can do downtown. (riverqueenvoyages.com)