


HAPPY BIRTHDAY KENNY!
I’ve discovered a much different river traveling up the dock for a swim. An older gentleman pulled up in his truck and unloaded a very anxious and excited dog,
The daily river traffic has slowed, only occasionally do we come across a tow pushing barges (all seem to be 15 now), most smaller tug traffic seems to be relocating either full or empty barges from one side of the river to the other. We pass more commercial areas for river transportation and even a dry dock specific for tugs. The river continues to be wide so we’ve had no trouble passing whatever comes our way.
There has to be oodles of heritage wrapped up in this river so each older, smaller town we pass have their own story to tell. More than once we’ve seen towns tell their story via a mural along the flood wall that history itself would tell you was built to protect the town. Unique old buildings and churches peak over these walls or through the trees.
We drove through another torrential rain storm and very thankful for our plastic windows in the pilot house. There are still a few drain holes at the floor level that will need to be plugged once we begin renovations. It will be so nice to have windows with windshield wipers too. I was forced to take my pictures from the less wet aft deck.
We have noted a few places we’d like to see when we make our return trip back to the lake next summer and some that would require a road trip in the motor home. One really cool looking place is a small town called Cave-in-Rock. That’s truly what they have to offer a huge cave in the mountainside at water level. We did not see any place to tie off, but we did pass a ferry right there at the city, so that could be a fun road trip one day.
We did ride past Evansville, IN - it's a BIG city with lots going on around their river front. So take a look at the pictures labeled French Islands if you're curious.
We’ve anchored out for a few nights now, each one offering its own form of entertainment. As I mentioned before there are fewer places to tuck in for the night along the anchor in Salt River just outside of
This is something we’ve wanted to do the entire trip! Just down the river there are a number of tows working on a RR bridge, across the river is a boat launch and a small campground. We had a young man ride up to the boat on his jet ski – yelling “Hello?” he wanted to know if it was okay for his nephew to practice on the jet ski here rather than in the big river – didn’t want to bother us. This was a first. Of-course we thought just practice driving, but it was more like crazy-man wheelies. It didn’t last very long and they both appeared to be having such a good time.
Today was the first day on the
We decided to anchor in Cook Bend cutoff and drove the entire length of the oxbow to check it out. Once we rounded the bend we encountered numerous nice homes, boats, water skiers and tubers. Everyone having a great start to the Fourth of July weekend, and a few beers I think. We found a nice little nitch closer to the mouth of the cutoff and dropped anchors. Again, probably not necessary since it seems there’s a few feet of soft mud holding us in place – but we did anyway just in case. We popped our heads out at around 4am to enjoy a spectacular view of the stars.