Cape Girardeau MO to Paducah KY

Today we turned the corner.  Ok, we turned about 50 of them.  The Mississippi gets a real case of the Twisties down near the south end of Illinois.    
Today we finished our journey on the Mississippi and 'turned the corner' onto the Ohio River. 
 The lower Mississippi is really low, but still navigable.... But it's really unfriendly for pleasure boaters.  There are few marinas between The Ohio River and New Orleans and also few fuel stops.  There are simply no tourists as it is swampy, ugly, and mostly boring.   

We journeyed up the Ohio through Olmsted lock:
This lock is HUGE and our eight boats looked tiny in it.  The water wells up in the middle of the lock as they fill it and it's a tad unsettling.  We were safelg bound to a floating bollard though and escaped with only minor scratches in the rub rail..

Now we are in the area called the Land Between the Lakes where we can choose the Cumberland river or the Tennessee River.  Both go the same place (at least at first) as they join the same massive dam backwater.  

One goes up to Nashville and the other goes to Muscle Shoals, Huntsville, Chattenooga and Knoxville.    We will choose the latter. (as there is a channel + rivers off this arm to the south that ends in Mobile AL).

But let's not get ahead of things.  We will do that next week.   This week we journeyed up to Paducah and a little bit past because the Paducah marina is full.  Since we have no dinghy we are waiting til tomorrow because we have boat friends who have reservations and we will tie off to them and use their boats as a dock so we can stay in the marina.    But today we anchored in a little channel off the Ohio a mile or so past the marina.  It's beautiful and quiet here. 
Paducah is a walled city and we are told it has some cool things to do.   So we will see that tomorrow (and the next day).  Our first time to stay somewhere two days. There will be more of those. (one, in two days).  Entering a period of cold and rain so going to hunker down and change oil etc.  

But for now... It's time to enjoy the 80 degree and partly cloudy days.  

Comments

  1. MileageOctober 26, 2023 at 10:06 AM

    Nice to see you have a drone and are getting some aerial shots. I always think I'll get mine out and then time slips by and I miss the opportunity.

    ReplyDelete

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