A Photo Gallery

The fork in the rivers  Mississippi River Bridge on the Left, and the
Ohio River Bridge on the Right

Rainy windless days always spell calm waters the Ohio was huge compared to Ole Miss, but it was not a good photo day.

More Industry on the Ohio

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Lock tender at Lock 52 on the Ohio (our second lock on the Ohio) he told us it was the busiest lock in the United States. We waited from 6 am to 8:30 am to go through it after anchoring in the channel in front of the very turbulent spillway

over night to catch it early!

This barge was waiting to come through the lock as we exited and another one was in the other chamber of the lock.  They lock through barges 24 hours a day.

We were glad we didn't make it to Paducah Friday night  because we would have been stuck there for a while, on Saturday.  They were having some sort of morning boat races . 

Entering the Cumberland river.  The 'cells' (round rusty cylinders are for barges to lay on when waiting for traffic on the very narrow Cumberland River.

And THIS is TRAFFIC!!

But.....it also looks like this....drop dead Gorgeous!

This is us passing a barge on the Cumberland....just before a bend in the river, you can see by our wake we were throttled up.

Our biggest and last lock before Green Turtle Bay Marina  The Barkley Lock where it took us 4 hours to get locked through!  Man I would not want to be a tow captain.  They are sitting along the banks up and down the rivers waiting for their turn to get through the lock.  It sounded like the lock tenders were giving them numbers to go through every few hours or so.... and we thought we waited a long time.  The bigger barges can't go through in one unit so the tug has to split them up up river from the lock.  Then they push the first half through and out into the river down from the lock, get locked back through to get the other half of their tow, get locked through again and reassemble the tow at the bottom end.  Just think about doing that more than once a day!  AMAZING!!!   Our hats are off to the tow captains of America!

We didn't get through the lock until after 7pm so we anchored and then went into Green Turtle Bay Marina in Grand Rivers, Kentucky.  This is THE spot for Loopers to stop on their way south after a couple of hard days with no marinas on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.  It was so great we stayed three nights instead of two.  We met a lot of new faces, and few familiar ones. Last night the place was packed with 30 Looper boats.

Dinner with (brother) Loopers Bob & John from M/V 'Yinzer: On the Water' at Patti's Settlement, Grand Rivers, Ky. the first stop for every one staying at Green Turtle Bay.  Their specialty a 2" one pound pork chop.  Which was, I must say ,fabulous and NO i didn't eat one myself.  Gary and I shared one and we still had some for a doggie bag!. It was seriously big and seriously good!
(and an aside) Bob lives in Hawaii, he and John boat the boat to do the loop and are really enjoying themselves. Their wives pretty much said "have fun"

The 1st Mates of Green Turtle's Looper Docktails party.  FYI,  Carolyn in the burgundy pants is doing the loop with her husband at the spry age of 80!!!
Just proves my shirt:
'People don't stop playing because they get old
People get old because they stop playing'...

And the bug finder was our friend Denny Craig who commented on the blog that the hitchhiker from the other day was a Cicada!  Googled it and sure enough, big bulging eyes and all.


We are now headed to NASHVILLE with Bob & Judy on Sanderling......Yippeee!!!!  Gary says this is our last hurrah before we head home with our tails tucked between our legs.  :-) or :-(