Where Does All the Time Go?

Since last writing, we ended our Mississippi River journey and turned up the Ohio River at Cairo. We overnighted at Paducha, Kentucky, and then continued up the Ohio to the Cumberland River. Now we're at the Green Turtle Bay Marina in Grand Rivers, Kentucky on the Cumberland River's Barkley Lake where we'll spend another night before heading up the lake and the Cumberland on a three day trip to Nashville.

In the below, I'm going to try to capture a little something for everybody. First of all, daily life. Living on a boat, seeing a new vista at every turn, and spending a night or two in a new place before moving on sounds romantic. It is romantic. But all the regular things of daily life continue: grocery shopping, laundry, preparing meals, Face Timing with the grandkids, and, of course, taking care of the bosun/aka commander-in-chief.

For those of you wondering, the lower Mississippi from our anchorage at Bum Guard Island to Cairo was relatively quiet and mostly undeveloped. We saw a few tugs and barges, lots of sand banks, not much else. Louise, if you're still reading these, the bird life on the Mississippi was a lot less than higher up on the Illinois. Now on the Cumberland we're seeing at least a few white pelicans, bald eagles, mocking birds, summer tanagers and such.

The confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio was BUSY. Tug and barge traffic headed in all directions entering and leaving both rivers and criss crossing the Ohio to make up barge trains. There was no time for pictures as I steered the boat and communicated with tug skippers while the Admiral looked out for whatever the next rapid-fire encounter would be. It thinned out as we moved up the Ohio but, until we reached the Olmstead Lock, industry dominated most of the landscape. We were glad it was Saturday!

Speaking of locks, approaching one keeps your attention. Usually before we get underway in the morning, I review the chart and one or two of our guide books to learn as much as I can. What side of the river will the lock be on? Are there parallel chambers? Does it have floating bollards to tie up to? What VHF channel do you talk to the lock master on? Where and how do you wait for your turn in the lock? Etc. But even so, when you start to arrive at a lock, it takes some figuring out. Usually the Admiral uses binoculars; I triangulate between the chart, what I can see in real life, and what the Admiral tells me, and, when radio traffic allows, I get on the VHF with the lock master not only to let him know we're approaching but to ask any questions we have. They always provide helpful advice and direction and in most cases do it good naturedly. The below pictures give you a sense of how things come in to view as you approach a lock--in this case the Olmstead Lock on the Ohio River.

As you can see in the second picture, there's a tug and barge entering what is the larger and river side lock. It takes a long time for them to enter--often with 15 or 20 and sometimes with as many as 30 barges in their tow. If they get the least bit cross-wise, they become wedged and it takes the full attention of both the tug and the lock crews to move them through. In this case, we waited probably an hour and then the lock master directed us to the smaller land-side lock. Because we were the only boat in that lock, we got to float it. The picture below shows the nearly full lock shortly before we exited. The tug and its barges were still in the bigger lock next door.

In any event, we eventually arrived at Paducha, Kentucky, and the City's transient boat dock. Despite having tried for days to get a reservation, we didn't have one. A group of fellow loopers happily helped us dock at an open space where we couldn't stay but no one was willing or able to let us raft up. Eventually, a very kind woman who was staying with her boat while her husband was away came back to the dock and agreed that we could raft with her. Thank you Sandy! It was a tight fit to align with her between the fuel dock behind us and the rafted pleasure boat in front of us. We made it by inches!

Paducha turns out to be a lovely town and we wished we were able to stay at least for a couple of days. The City of 70,000 has a railroad museum, a river museum, a market museum (not sure what that is) and a spectacular performing arts center, none of which we were able to enjoy given our late afternoon arrival. We did get to walk through the National Quilt Museum and eat at Freight, a restaurant whose chef has won on tv's Top Chef. The quilts were spectacular and I show off two of my favorites below.

Paducha also lays claim to the history of Lewis and Clark. The late afternoon light was terrible for this pic of one of their memorials.

I close on Paducah with this picture of its Main Street as we enjoyed our sunset walk back to the boat after our 5:00 pm dinner. Talk about blue hairs!

Yesterday, after adding almost 200 gallons of fuel to Katahdin and waiting for the fog to lift, We headed up the Ohio and, ten miles later, found the mouth of the Cumberland. The lower reaches had several stone and aggregate quarries and we met a number of tugs and barges heavily laden with stone.

 As the Cumberland twists and turns along its narrow course, we tried to use our chart and the AIS information to meet these on straight aways.

Eventually, we caught up with four other boats that had left Paducha before we did and, trying to be good citizens, we fell in line at their trawler speed (6 or so knots) and followed them the 15 or so remaining miles up to the Barkley lock and dam. Never again. We happily travel at 12 to 15 knots (our top speed is 25) and poking along with the steering moving back and forth and relying on another unknown boater to coordinate with tug skippers is just not for us. That point was hammered home when, after a long wait at the Barkley Lock, the downbound tug and barge slowly exited and at least two of the other boats had to be told a half dozen times to get out of the way.

The picture belows shows us finally in the Barkley Lock which has an elevation change of 50 feet, one of the higher lifts on the loop. Going up!

And, last night we had dinner at Patty's where it's always Christmas and the 2 inch pork chop is the featured dish. It was yummy even if the decorations were a bit distracting!

Down day today. That means tending to boat maintenance, doing the laundry, grocery shopping, and hopefully hanging just a bit!