Kentucky

9/29/18 Saturday:  Our only agenda today was to get our rental car for the next week, and go the the Barbeque on the River event in Paducah.  This is a huge event, with over 100 food vendors – over 30 of them smoking up some great BBQ!  Add to that, it’s Saturday, so the Farmer’s market would be joining in the fun too.  There will be all sorts of things to see, eat, smell, buy, and even some live bands to listen to!  Woo-Hoo!  Party time!  The weather was forecasted to be clear and in the mid 70’s – perfect!  The Enterprise Rental Car guy came to pick us up around 9:30.  That they even came to pick us up was surprising, since it was nearly a 20 mile journey from Paducah to the Marina to get us.  Most Enterprise locations have a five mile radius for client pick-up.  As we left the marina, I spied this cute little Pink Tractor place.  I think it was a women’s clothing store. Read more →

9/27/18 Thursday: This was a very rainy, wet, soggy doggy day!  I did some laundry, but all-in-all, it was a very lazy day.

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9/25/18 Tuesday:  Today would be either a 20 mile day if we take the Tennessee River (the red route), or a 45 mile day if we take the Cumberland River (the blue route).  Why would we choose to go farther?  Because generally, it takes less time.  What?!  Our destination is Green Turtle Bay Resort & Marina.  To get there via the Tennessee River, we need to go through the Kentucky Lock & Dam, which is very commercial, and notorious for delays.  To get there via the Cumberland River, we need to go through the Barkley Lock & Dam, which is more pleasure craft friendly and generally has few in the queue.  However, Barkley has been ‘broken down’ a couple of times in the last week, where boaters had to tie up and eventually go through the lock in the dark.  YIKES!

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9/24/18 Monday:  It was a really rainy and warm morning, so we hung out inside for the morning, staying dry and cool.  Finally around 3:00, I thought there might be a break in the rain, so I said that I wanted to go see town.  Kenny said he’d tag along.  When we came up the walkway from the dock, this is what we saw.  Yes, a parking lot.  But also a very large wall.  This city is fortified against the river!  There is this huge flood wall that runs all along the river.

The City of Paducah operates and maintains the concrete and earthen levee system that extends 12.25 miles (9.25 miles of earthen levee and 3.0 miles of concrete).  The concrete wall in downtown Paducah is 14 feet in height.  The system includes 12 pump stations and several pipe gates, pipes, and 47 vehicular openings.  The floodwall was constructed between August 1939 and July 1949. The floodwall provides a level of protection equal to the record 1937 flood plus three feet.  Read more →

9/23/18 Sunday:  It was not a very restful night.  We both weren’t completely happy with the way we were anchored – we like to have more scope out, but couldn’t do that in this narrow channel with how deep the water is.  And we knew we had to get going at the crack of dawn.  I hate that…. when you know you have to hop out early, so you end up waking up a zillion times, even though the alarm is set.  🙄  I finally got up about 6:00, and got ready to pull the anchor.  Kenny checked the AIS and discovered that there were two tows that were headed upriver near our little channel, so we wouldn’t be able to leave until they were past us.  It was still dark out.  Really dark.  We could see that all the other boats had light on inside, so everybody was up and getting ready, but we had to wait….for daylight, and for tows.    So we fixed some coffee and waited.  Pretty soon, we could hear the tows.  They sound a lot like a train rumbling as it comes closer.  And then we saw the lights on the front barges going upstream at the channel opening.  And then – a big bright spotlight shining in at all of us! Read more →