Week 14

 Week 14

Oct 13-19

Monday

We left this morning just before 7. Our first lock was right outside the marina we waited 1 hour to get in. That wasn't too bad. The next lock we only waited about 20 min.

We traveled 86 Nautical miles down the Mississippi river today.

We tied up to the lock wall at Kaskaskia with 6 other looper boats.

The highlight today was Liz from good karma fed us all day. Her boat was like a drive up window. It started as a joke early this morning, but Liz took it to heart and made breakfast tacos. We would pull up along side and she'd hand us a grocery sack from one moving boat on the Mississippi to another. I tossed her some of our pumpkin bread and pumpkin roll. Lunch she had leftovers of chicken and dumplings. 😀 It looked like a drive up window with several boats line up to come along side their big yacht. See the action on our YouTube video. For dinner they had us all,13 people, on their boat for chicken gumbo. She always has so much food on her boat because she has a big deep freezer in her cockpit. Their boat is 60ft.

Tuesday

We left at 7 this morning for the second leg of this river cruise. We just pass by barge after barge. It's been amazing to witness first hand this artery of America’s heartland. The amount of commercial traffic is astounding.

We've reached the half way point in miles on our travels, 3,000 nautical miles. We are going a little further though because we went so fast up the Chesapeake we're going back to do it again along with the Potomac.

We traveled 70 nautical miles today. We turned up Little Diversion canal to anchor for the night. There were 8 of us loop boats anchored in here. A tug had just gone past the opening of the canal when we got there. The water was churning so bad from prop wash mixed with current it almost turned our boat completely around. We did some deep side to side motions. A few baskets fell off the shelf. It's rare that we have any messes from wave action. We're battened down pretty good. This happened on a river!

Wednesday

We had an uneventful night. We always worry a little that we're going to drag anchor and end up in the mud or rocks. We pulled up anchor and headed down the Mississippi for our 3rd day.

We stopped and dropped the anchor for our institute class off to the side of the main Mississippi River channel. This was our last week teaching with this group. It was a really good group.

Shortly after we pulled up anchor we turned off the Mississippi river onto the Ohio river at Cairo, pronounced “kayrow”. We were going against the current of the mighty Ohio river for nearly 50 miles. It burns a lot of fuel!!! We only had one lock to get through, and we got right in. The group was anchoring in a creek in Kentucky in a pretty spot but Allison wanted to get to Paducah, get off the boat and exercise. We hurried the rest of the way to get to Paducah KY before dark. Kentucky is our 12th state so far on this trip. We arrived at 5 pm just before dark by going 20mph the last 30 miles. That was a 9 hour day. We traveled 84 nautical miles.

The Ohio river is so much prettier than the Mississippi. It's cleaner! The water is actually blue.

We didn't have a reservation for a spot on the dock in Paducah for this night since we came early but good karma was gracious enough to let us raft up to their boat. Paducah has a city marina and it's just one long dock. There were about 9 boats on the dock tonight.

We were told we must go to Doe's steakhouse for dinner. It did not disappoint!! It was excellent.

Thursday

We started the day at the national quilt museum. Look it up on YouTube or watch our video!!! It's amazing. Even the men in the group were impressed! We did a little walking tour of the historic downtown Paducah before lunch. It's so cute here.

In the afternoon we walked to the railroad museum, but we didn't think it was worth the time and money to go in. It was very small.

We walked to a river history museum instead. It was interesting to learn about the river systems and the floods of the Ohio river. Paducah is in the heart of all these major inland rivers. Which was a very strategic location during the civil war. Hence the Occupation by US forces. Some interesting facts: it takes a tug 3/4 mi to stop the barge, here in Paducah barges go by 24/7 and the amount of commerce that goes by Paducah in a 24 hour period is equivalent to about 63,000 semi-trucks hauling one trailer each. That's so much commerce in one day!!! The tugs push so many barges at a time, up to 72 barges and can be 2000 ft long. It's such an efficient way to move goods all around these rivers. When they say the river systems they're usually referring to the major rivers i.e. Missouri, Mississippi, Illinois, Ohio, Arkansas, and the Tennessee. One injury occurs on a tug on the water compared to 1100 injuries driving trucks for the same amount of cargo. We learned so many interesting facts at this little museum. It also had a tug pilot simulator. In 1937 flood 80% of the town was flooded and displaced. At that time the Mississippi river was 8 miles wide at Paducah. It was devastating. Thereafter they walked in the city with a beautiful flood wall with amazing murals. The flood level was 60 feet higher than the Mississippi river level today. See pictures. 60 ft deep by 8 miles wide is a lot of water. It had rained, Kentucky style, 27 days consecutive.

Friday

We spent the morning scootering and playing tennis, grocery, bike store, and lunch. The tennis court was in a huge park about the size of liberty park only it's prettier. The courts looked brand new. This time of year the weather is so perfect and today was just a bit overcast, so no sun glare. We rode our scooters to all of these places and on the way home took a really scenic bike path.

We got back to the boat just in time to help winsor rose raft onto our boat. They didn't have a reservation for tonight, so we offered our boat.

We took off again on our scooters to go to the civil war museum. It's in a house that is 173 years old that belonged to a Confederate general. It's a big house. Each room had a lot of memorabilia. The interesting thing about this museum is the monumental role Paducah and the river systems had on the outcome of the war. Lincoln knew that whoever controlled these waterways would determine who was the víctor. These waterways were the big supply lines for the armies. Lincoln dispatched Gen. Grant to Paducah in 1861 and the north had possession the entire war. Paducah played a prominent strategic role in the war. Many historians say controlling Paducah determined the outcome. They still call the US military an occupying army down here in Western Kentucky; referring to the civil war occupation. There are no Yankees, just Damn Yankees. The guide was just so knowledgable and excited to tell all kinds of stories.

It was Karen's (from winsor rose) birthday and they invited us to dinner with them. We went to a restaurant where we heard the chef was renound. It was excellent. One of the best meals we've had on the whole loop. It was called the freight house. Afterwards we went to a concert of Starship, the original singer from Jefferson Starship. It was really fun. We had a great night.

Saturday

We left first thing this morning with winsor rose to cruise to green turtle bay on Barkley lake in Kentucky. We headed up the Ohio river a ways and then turned off onto the Cumberland river. It's a little longer in distance but faster in time. There's almost no commercial traffic on this much smaller river. It's a beautiful river.

We cruised 40 nautical miles today through the Barkley lock and into the marina.

We were told we had to go to Patti's for dinner. They came to pick us up in a golf cart. In Patties there's probably a dozen different rooms each with a different theme. They've already started decorating for Christmas. They start decorating early because they put up over 3 million lights! It was so cute.

We went to good karma to watch the BYU/Utah game. Disappointing loss for the Utes.

Sunday

It's stake conference in this area, so we didn't go to church today. Ed had to do some boat maintenance and replace the racor fuel filters, so Liz picked me up in the golf cart and we went to town to run some errands. On the way back to the marina the golf cart broke down. We sat in the side of the road waiting for a replacement cart to arrive.

We got an Amazon delivery that Ed picked up at the boat store. We got 2 smallish camp chairs, but the fun thing is they rock!!

We went to dinner with Good Karma and Advontour. We went to the same Patties restaurant as we did last night because it is sooooo good. Ed and i hardly ate today saving up for dinner. All we ordered was three desserts. The waiter said he had never had that request before. He brought them out in courses, one for appetizer, main course, and dessert. We couldn't eat our dessert course. We had a sugar overload but sooo yummy. We brought that last one back to the boat. Kathy, from Aventuur is a hoot. We got new words. We can hardly remember what day it is so it's "blursday" or the "bleekend" 😉

See you next time!