Traveling With PRIORITIES

Thursday Aug. 29

43 miles Ohio river, IL mm# 966 to Ohio river, KY mm# 923.5

We pulled anchor at 0640 and went around the area where they are building the new lock. It seems weird to think that the next time we come this way this part of the river will be a dam. There is a lot of tow and barge traffic but the Ohio River is very wide along this section. It was very easy to pass them by, even the big ones. The first lock (Ohio River #53) we came to we did not have to lock thru but could instead go around. When the river water is high enough they have what are called wickets which they can lower to let boat traffic go over instead of locking thru the lock. There was a little turbulence but not enough to stop us from getting thru. The next lock (Ohio River #52) was not so easy going thru. This lock normally has 2 chambers but at this time only 1 was working, which caused a back up for the tows. Some of these tows we found out had been waiting for 2 days to lock through. Thankfully our wait was only for 3 hours, not days. This delay called for plan B for our cruising today. During this trip we usually not only have a plan B, but C as well set up the night before to use the next day just in case. You never know what lies ahead with the river system and how it can change daily. During our 3 hour wait by the lock we anchored, had lunch and Randy took a nap. (Retirement is soooooo rough)

Ohio River Lock #53

Since we are going up river on the Ohio at this lock we raised up 12 foot. It didn’t take them long to lock us up and we were on our way. We soon passed a little town called Metropolis IL. Sound familiar? …Superman!! We didn’t see any sign of the caped man but they supposedly have a water tower with his picture painted on it. They also have Fort Massac which is located in Illinois’s first State park. This fort is a replica of the 1802 American fort that was on this site. It also has the archaeological outline of the 1757 French fort from the French and Indian war which was also located here.

At 1500 we come to the end of today’s journey. We choose to anchor between an island (Cumberland Island Towhead) and the Kentucky shore. This is a nice little spot out of the barge traffic. The other side of the island is the Cumberland River which is the next fork off the Ohio River in our adventure.

Left is the Ohio River and right is the Cumberland River.