Saturday September 11, 2021.
Temp: 84/64, Humidity: 49/83%, Top Wind: SW9 mph, Precip: None- hazy & sunny, Miles Traveled: a few on foot
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It was a rocky rolly night on the outside of the dock in Paducah. We both woke up several times as tows went by and rolled us. Oh well, we’re just thankful there is a marina here! It was just opened in 2017. Prior to that, it was nearly 300 miles between marinas, coming down from Alton to Grand Rivers, which meant at least three nights at anchor. This cuts off about 45 miles, which doesn’t seem like much, but it is the difference of a day on the marina-less journey! And they have fuel here, so for gas powered boats or boats with less than 300 miles capability, it matters!
This is the marina. Notice how tall the pilings are?
The Ohio river can flood just as bad as the Mississippi, so when this marina was built, the pilings were set to handle the record floods. If you look at google maps, all you can see is the piling tops. I guess the image is from when it was under construction during extremely high water. The water is nowhere near that level today!
We walked up the hill to ground level, and along the park here. There were some ‘dragon-boat’ races going on today, so there was a lot of activity out on the river. The dragon-boats paddle upstream for some distance, in several races and heats.
It is Saturday, so there was a farmer’s market going on. It wasn’t huge like the one we went to in Holland Michigan, but there were some nice veggies and baked goods to be had. I liked the trailer full of pumpkins. Fall is coming!
Our treasures consisted of two nice juicy tomatos, a zucchini, and four home-fried fruit pies that were amazingly delicious!
This is more evidence of great floods in Paducah. The city actually has a wall all along the top of the river bank that can be closed off to hold back flood waters. There are marks on this gate, showing the highest at 55’ in 2011. There was a devastating flood in 1937, and after that, this wall was built to protect the town.
In town, there are some markers on buildings that show where the 1937 flood reached. It is amazing that there are so many wonderful buildings still here. It really is a delightful little town with a lot of character.
The in side of the wall has murals painted all along to show history of the area.
This one is of the dam 52, that is no longer on the river, and was replaced by the Olmsted lock & dam.
Lock 52 was completed in 1928 and served the river until 2018.
This one shows the early churches in Paducah.
The first church building in town was the United Methodist in 1832.
This is just a picture of some of the buildings in town today. It is 9/11, so the flag is flying at half-mast.
OOhhhh – The Barrel and Bond stop. This is a bourbon bar that the bartender at the brewery told us about. I suggested that we might stop in here before dinner tonight, but Kenny said that would probably cost more than dinner. 😉
I love this shot. Just some old buildings along a block with pretty trees. It looks like it belongs in Charleston or Savannah.
The old market building has a lot of character. And apparently even some characters that get wheeled around. I don’t know the significance of the red bull or the colorful pig!
I went to the river banks to watch a dragon boat race. While waiting, this flutterby came along to gather some lunch.
This race wasn’t very close. You see the person in the front of the boat? That is the drummer who sets and holds the cadence by pounding the drum. The front boat’s cadence was a bit faster, but as they went along, the paddlers in the back got out of sync because I think they were hearing the drum to their left. But they still won the race.
Kenny stayed back at Island Girl, and I went for a stroll through the National Quilt Museum. I know – it sounds boring, but it was really quite interesting. And today was free admission on 9/11, because they were hosting a 9/11 display on loan from the 911 museum in New York. It really was very interesting when you consider the talent and quality of workmanship these artists have! The quilts on display aren’t what you expect.
I took a panoramic shot of the six panel National Tribute Quilt. It didn’t really bend like it looks – that was just the camera trying to take it all in.
The quilt is six panels: the far left is dedicated to the victims of the four hijacked flights. The four centere ones are dedicated to the World Trade Center victims. The far right is dedicated to the Pentagon vicitims.
It was really sobering, and I got choked up looking at it because of all the people it pays tribute to, all of whom went to work one day and never came home.
This was one of my favorite pieces. Just a beautiful bright quilt of our flag, and the way the fabric pieces were put together to show shading and movement. Just so cool.
The stitching was amazing. I’ve made simple quilts before, but the pieces of art in this museum are incredible.
I liked this one just because of the colors.
This elephant was really neat. It looks almost like it’s painted, but it really is pieces of differnt color fabric all pieced together and stitched.
The pieces are stitched onto a black background to give the stained glass look. I am in awe of the perfection on how the raw edges are tucked under and all the curves are flat. How do they do that?!
This one blew my mind. From a distance, you think, OK – thats a nice Oriental style rug.
But then you look close, and it is thousands of tiny skinny pieces of fabric, appliques, embroidery, and quilting. Wow! The sign did not say how long this one took to make.
These were really cool. There was a whole section of Denise Labadie quilts depicting stone structures like Easter Island and so on.
Quilts were made to follow the photograph. Here is a close up of some of the work on this one.
And here is the whole quilt. It is amazing how the various fabrics and stitching result in this, with the shadows, depth, textures and colors. It looks like a painting!
This was another one I really liked.
We generally think of quilts as an item used to keep warm. But these really are works of art, like a painter’s canvas, except the medium here is fabric and thread.
The stitching is cool how it creates depth.
This one is hard to explain. It is made out of a single piece of WOOD. It is essentially a board that has been carved into a shape, then intricate carving to show quilt-like texture and painted to look like a quilt hanging on a rod. It’s literally stiff as a board.
This shows the depth of the carving to make it look like fabric overlapping on the rod.
This is a sample that was available to be touched, that shows how the wood was carved and textured and painted.
This is looking at the edge where you can see the back. It was really hard on the brain to understand that it is a solid piece of wood, without being able to touch it, because the eye said it was fabric. It was so hard to not touch it!! Very cool.
I went back to the boat and picked up my date for a steak dinner at Doe’s Eat Place. It is nothing to look at, I’ll tell you that! It’s just a plain-jane corner brick building.
Inside it looks like a dive bar, too. But they have some of the best steak in the country, and we’ve been looking forward to it.
We ordered the two pound porterhouse, which comes standard with two salads and two sides. It is meant to be shared. YUM! We thought we’d have left overs like last time. Nope. We ate the whole thing. But hey – some of that two pounds was bone and fat. 😋
We walked around town after dinner to help our tummies digest and we saw this! Indoor axe throwing… is a bar.
I had to step inside to see, and there was a bachelorette party inside. I asked one of the gals if she’d done this before. She said no, and that it is way harder than it looks. HA! Crazy. Axes and alcohol. What could possibly go wrong?
After our stroll around town, we went back to the Paducah Beer Werks because they were having a live band outside this evening. We sat and had a beer or two and enjoyed the music. It was really a nice pleasant evening – not too humid, and it had cooled down into the mid 70’s. The band played some good blues tunes.
These were the fellow loopers here that we have just met at the dock here; Sweet Haven, Wayward Travelers, Legacy, and Dream Weaver. We didn’t spend much time with them, since they all went for steak last night while we went Cajun. Oh well. Chances are that we’ll see them again down the waterway.
We will head out tomorrow for the Kentucky Lakes where we’ll spend the next couple of weeks. 😊. It’ll be nice to be off of the “Big Rivers” – the Illinois, Mississippi and Ohio. Next up will be the Cumberland, Tennessee and Tennessee-Tom Bigbee Waterway.