Month: October 2022

• 55.5 miles
• 5 hours 26 minutes
• 10.2 mph average speed
• 5-15 mph winds

We are now off the rivers and back in saltwater and tides. It has been quite a while since we have encountered rough seas but crossing Mobile Bay was a little rough due to the high winds. We had a little rain on our trip which we also have not seen in quite a while!

We had a delicious dinner at Wok by d’Bay in Fairhope:

Included in our “welcome folder” from the marina was a recipe for Swamp Soup which is a popular dish around this area.

The following day, we had a wonderful breakfast at Warehouse Bakery & Donuts:

Next, we spent several hours walking around downtown Fairhope and visiting the Fairhope Museum of History and the Fairhope Storybook Castles.

Fairhope Pharmacy was built in 1916 and has been a pharmacy ever since. It is one of the oldest pharmacies in Alabama.

The Farihope Museum of History is a great museum! It is located in a 1928 Spanish mission-style building which served as City Hall and the Fairhope Police Department from 1928 until 2002.

Also inside the museum was the old town jail. The white stucco wall was originally the back wall of the building in 1928. The two jail cells contain the original iron bars and riveted walls which came out of a ship. The jail cells were still in use in 2002 and the graffiti was left by the prisoners.

Dean Mosher is a renowned artist who resides in Farihope in his hand-built home and studio, Mosher Castle (see below). Some of his paintings are included in places such as the Naval Academy in Annapolis, The Smithsonian (“Wilbur Wright Greets Lady Liberty”) and several National Park Visitors Centers among other places as well as in many books.

Fairhope’s “Storybook Castles” consist of Sheldon Castle, Mosher Castle and Boom Castle.

Sheldon Castle was hand-built in 1946 by Dean Mosher’s father-in-law, Craig Sheldon who is memorialized in the bronze statue posted above. Notice the patchwork-quilt design of the roof. Sheldon would bring home materials that were left over from construction jobs where he worked. The tower was built in the 1950’s for his children’s rooms and his office. The house was built of Clay City tile covered with Mobile Bay stone. Sheldon embellished the stone with items such as old tools, Civil War shrapnel, cookware and bottles.

Mosher Castle was hand-built by Dean Mosher, Sheldon’s son-in-law. Construction began in 1983 and is ongoing. Many of the features found in Sheldon’s castle appear in Mosher Castle as well. The stones of Mosher Castle are embedded with glass and pottery as well as objects from around the world, including the Great Wall of China and the Berlin Wall.

Boom Castle was completed in 2020. Long-time friends of the Sheldon-Mother families, Glenn and Sally Boom, purchased the land adjacent to Mosher Castle. Mosher designed Boom Castle and did much of the exterior trim and stonework.

We had dinner at Sunset Point which was right in front of where we were docked.

After dinner, we drove over to the Farihope Yacht Club where Summer Place was docked and had a glass of wine with Tracy and Joel. They left the next day and we stayed another day in Fairhope.

We started our final day in Farihope with amazing homemade beignets from Paninin Pete’s located in the French Quarter of downtown Fairhope.

Tolstoy Park, also known as the Henry Stuart House or Hermit House – In 1923, Henry Stuart was diagnosed with tuberculosis and told he had only a few months to live. He moved from Nampa, Idaho to Fairhope after his doctor advised him to move to a better climate to live out his final days. He purchased 10 wooded acres and built Tolstoy Park, a one-room round house which measures only 14 feet wide, is sunk 2 feet into the ground (to maintain a fairly constant temperature) and is made of bricks and hand-made concrete blocks. Stuart used a ladder to access his “bed”, a rope-strung hammock high above floor level. After being told that he had only a few months to live, Stuart ended up living another 22 years! Stuart is the inspiration for the fact-based historical fiction novel, “The Poet of Tolstoy Park”, published in 2005. The author of the novel, Fairhope resident Sonny Brewer, actually wrote much of the novel inside the hut. It is believed Stuart named his hut “Tolstoy Park” because his favorite Russian author, Leo Tolstoy, was a hermit in the years before his death. Stuart was known as the Hermit of Montrose, the name of the area that is now Fairhope, although he really wasn’t a hermit. He welcomed many visitors to his home and became a fixture in the community, teaching and inspiring others. The home is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is actually in the parking lot of an office complex which was later built around the hut.

The Grand Hotel, the “Queen of Southern Resorts”, originally opened in 1847 as a two-story building with 40 rooms. In 1864, it served as a hospital for Confederate soldiers during the Civil War and hosted key training operations during World War II. Every day, the Grand Hotel honors its wartime history with a canon firing on the edge of Mobile Bay. The hotel was renovated and added on to several times and was eventually sold to Marriott International in the 1980’s and now has over 400 rooms across five buildings covering 550 acres.

We enjoyed walking the beautiful trail around the grounds of the hotel and along the banks of Mobile Bay. We had planned to have lunch about a mile and a half down the street at Wash House Restaurant and discovered a wonderful walking trail in-between magnificent homes and their docks on Mobile Bay which led us to the restaurant. Once we got to the restaurant, we learned that it was only open for dinner so we walked back to the hotel where our rental car was parked.

We later stopped for lunch at Fish River Grill, a “Funky Junky Redneck Joint”. The restaurant offers patrons a sample of Swamp Soup. We were delighted to taste a sample of this soup since the marina where we are staying had provided us with a recipe for Swamp Soup. We will definitely be making this soup soon – it was delicious!

• 86.8 miles
• 9 hours 9 minutes
• 9.5 mph average speed
• 3-9 mph winds

We were up early to meet the three boats that docked at Bobby’s Fish Camp so we could all lock through Coffeeville Lock together. This is our last lock on our Loop. It’s hard to believe we are so close to completing our grand adventure!

Bobby’s Fish Camp, located halfway between Demopolis and Mobile, has been a traditional stop for Loopers. It opened as a restaurant in 1956 to serve local river traffic but when the Tenn-Tom opened in 1985, traffic increased to include larger recreational vessels. Since some boats are not able to cover the distance without refueling, the Demopolis Yacht Basin asked Booby’s to add a fueling station. The restaurant reportedly had the best catfish dinner but is now permanently closed. Since we did not need to take on more fuel and there was nothing else to see or do around there, we had opted to anchor rather than tying up at the old, rickety docks but many Loopers do still decide to tie up there overnight.

Spotting alligators has become more common lately than spotting Bald Eagles. Kevin has become a master at spotting both and will radio to the boats behind us to let them know when he spots something. On this journey, we saw eight alligators and two deer. One of the deer was swimming in the river!

The Tensaw River Anchorage was wonderful! It was very large in contrast with the Okatuppa Creek Anchorage which was quite narrow. We set anchor about a mile upriver and Summer Place rafted to us again. Tracy and Joel invited us on their boat for a delicious dinner of cucumber and tomato salad and chicken fajitas and we took strawberry parfaits for desert. We had a great time getting to know Tracy and Joel better after having traveled with them the last couple of days.

• 91.8 miles
• 9 hours six minutes
• 10.1 mph average speed
• 3-6 mph winds

We started the day with seven Loopers leaving the marina and locking through Demopolis Lock (40′) together before we all ended up at a few different anchorages. Perfect Match and Summer Place had planned to anchor at Okatuppa Creek and Summer Place ended up rafting to Perfect Match once we were in the anchorage.

There was a lot of tow traffic but they were smaller (6-9 barges) than the tows we were used to seeing on the Mississippi (15-18 barges). We also saw the smallest tow we have seen which was pushing only one barge.

We saw a pair of bald eagles and three alligators although we did not get photos of the alligators.

• 68.7 miles
• 8 hours 4 minutes
• 8.5 mph average speed
• 3-6 mph winds

We saw a lot of wildlife today:

The White Cliffs of Epes, formed around the same time as England’s White Cliffs of Dover, are cliffs of sheer white chalk stretching for about a mile along the banks of the Tombigbee River. It was truly spectacular cruising past these stunning cliffs!

Once docked, we took a shuttle to town to have dinner at the Red Barn Restaurant with Herb and Sandy from Spirit of 76.

The marina has a courtesy car which we were only able to reserve from 2:00-4:00 which was right in the middle of the Ohio State game so Ellen had to leave Kevin on the boat to finish watching Ohio State beat the Iowa Hawkeyes 54-10. Ellen stopped at the grocery store and made a whirlwind tour of Demopolis in the two hours that she had use of the car.

Gaineswood is a National Historic Landmark has been called one of the most unusual Greek Revival houses in America. While a complete tour of the home takes about two hours, Ellen asked if she could have an abbreviated 30 minute tour since she was the only person there at the time. The wonderful young tour guide obliged and did an excellent job of condensing the tour while still providing a lot of interesting information.

Gaineswood was built over an 18 year period (1843-1861) by owner and architect Nathan Bryan Whitfield and was completed on the eve of the Civil War. The home remains filled with the family’s original antebellum furnishings.

Bluff Hall was built in 1832 and overlooks the Tombigbee River. Unfortunately, time would not allow for a tour of the inside of this home.

Trinity Episcopal Church was established in 1834 and the congregation met in homes until the first church building was completed in 1857. The original building was burned by Federal troops during their occupation of Demopolis after the Civil War. The present church building was built in 1870 and the bell tower was added in 1910.

Spirit of 76 had reserved the courtesy car from 6:00-8:00PM so we joined them for a ride to town and dinner at an Italian restaurant.

• 49 miles
• 6 hours 1 minute
• 8.1 mph average speed
• 2-5 mph winds

Today we traveled with two Loopers that we had just met at Columbus Marina. We transited two locks, both lowering us about 27′. We anchored with Spirit of 76 and the other boat decided to anchor a few miles past where we had stopped. As our generator is not working and we are waiting on a part to be delivered to get it repaired, Spirit of 76 had thoughtfully offered for us to raft up to them so that we could run an extension cord to our boat and use our space heater. Overnight temperatures were originally predicted to be in the high 20’s but, as it turned out, they were only in the low 40’s so we told them that we thought we would be okay without rafting up to them. It was very calm and peaceful in the anchorage and we did actually stay warm even with no heat!

Along the way, we saw something you don’t see everyday, let alone along a very rural area on the Tenn-Tom near the border of MS and AL:

• 60 miles
• 7 hours 29 minutes
• 8.2 mph average speed
• 6-13 mph winds

It was a blistering 36 degrees when we left Midway Marina at 6:47AM. We traveled with the same group of Loopers that we had traveled with the day before and transited four locks which each dropped us 25′-30′.

There was a tow ahead of us at the second lock who very kindly let us all go ahead of him. As mentioned in a previous post, commercial traffic has priority and pleasure craft are normally required to wait until the tows lock through before they are allowed to enter the locks. Had the tow captain not been so generous, we would have had to wait a couple of hours for him to get in and out of the lock and for it to be filled back up so that we could enter. Additionally, we would have likely been behind him the rest of the day and would have had to wait for him to lock through at the third and fourth locks as well making an already long day even longer. We were all very grateful that he allowed us to lock through ahead of him!

Our first stop in Columbus was the birthplace of Thomas Lanier “Tennessee” Williams. Tennessee Williams, said to have been the most important American playwright ever, was born in Columbus in 1911. Williams won two Pulitzer Prizes for his plays “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1955) and “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1948). His maternal grandfather was the priest of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and the home, built in 1875, where Williams lived for the first three years of his life was the church parsonage located next-door to the church. In 1993, the home was in jeopardy of being destroyed to make room for the church’s expansion. Concerned citizens of Columbus rallied together and purchased the home. They then had it moved a couple of blocks and renovated it back to its original glory.

Next, we took a self-guided walking tour of the Southside Historic District. It was an absolutely beautiful day for a walk around the neighborhood! Columbus is filled with beautiful, stately homes from the 1800’s. Columbus was first settled in 1817, and became the Town of Columbus, Alabama in 1819. When the state line was surveyed in 1820, Columbus was found to be in Mississippi and was chartered as a city in Mississippi in 1821. Columbus was sparred much of the destruction that many other cities faced during the Civil War. The city was fiercely defended as a supply point for armaments and munitions and this protection led to its use as a hospital town. Many of the homes and churches were opened to nurse thousands of wounded on both sides after the Battle of Shiloh. Columbus was also home to Confederate General Stephen D. Lee who ordered the first shot at Fort Sumter which effectively started the Civil War.

Below are some of the homes that we saw on our wonderful walk through the neighborhood.

We then walked to Friendship Cemetery which was founded in 1849. Veterans of virtually every war from the War of 1812 to the Persian Gulf War in 1990 are buried there including 2,194 Confederate Soldiers who died of wounds suffered in the Battle of Shiloh fought in April 1862 (Union soldiers were reinterred in the Corinth National Cemetery in 1867). An early memorial ceremony honoring the Civil War soldiers buried in Friendship Cemetery has been credited as the inspiration of the modern day Memorial Day. On April 25, 1866, four Columbus women met to plan a day to honor the Confederate dead. In a spirit of unity and compassion, they decided to honor all fallen soldiers at Friendship Cemetery, placing flowers on both Confederate and Union soldiers’ graves.

Finally, we learned about the Buttahatchee Barn Quilt Trail which consists of about 60 quilt squares painted onto a solid piece of wood and often hung on barns. There are quilt trails in 43 states! While we were not able to take a driving tour around the trail to see the decorated barns, we did find three of the quilt squares in downtown Columbus. We will certainly be on the lookout for Barn Quilt Trails if or when we embark on our next bucket list item of traveling the country in a fifth wheel!

Below are a couple of photos from the Buttahatchee Quilt Trail FaceBook group:

• 56.7 miles
• 7 hours 9 minutes
• 7.9 mph average speed
• 4-7 mph winds

We are still enjoying the beautiful Fall colors as we travel along the Tenn-Tom Waterway!

We saw several bald eagles on our way to Fulton and only a couple of tows.

We transited three locks: Whitten Lock – 84′, Montgomery Lock – 30′ and Rankin Lock – 30′. We had to wait about an hour and a half at Whitten Lock for maintenance to be completed but once we locked through we did not have to wait at the next two locks as the Whitten lock master had called ahead to them and their gates were open and ready for us to enter. We started the day out solo when we left Iuka, but by the time we finished waiting at the first lock, eight other boats had joined us. Seven of these boats were Loopers whom we had not previously met. Once through Whitten Lock we remained together as a group the rest of the day. It does no good to try to go fast to get to the next lock because the lock master will wait until all the boats are there to lock everyone through together.

Whitten Lock is the forth-highest single lift lock in the country and measures 600 feet long by 110 feet wide. Below are some photos of the massive Whitten Lock:

We took the courtesy car to Fogata’s Mexican Grill & Bar and had the most amazing made-to-order guacamole before dinner.

• 60 miles
• 7 hours 29 minuts
• 8.2 mph average speed
• 6-13 mph winds

After this beautiful sunrise as we were leaving the marina, we cruised through very thick fog for about an hour but it then turned out to be another beautiful day on the Tennessee River.

We locked up about 55′ at the Pickwick Lock with only one other boat in the lock with us.

Just before we got to the marina, we crossed the Tri State Border of AL, MS and TN and then turned on to Yellow Creek, the beginning of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway.

The “Tenn-Tom” is a 253 mile waterway that connects the Tennessee River at Pickwick Lake with the Tombigbee River in Demopolis, AL. It was a bigger man-made canal project than the Panama Canal. There are 10 locks on the Tenn-Tom and we will lock down 341′ over a distance of 450 miles before reaching Mobile. This is one of the most remote sections of the Great Loop.

There is a restaurant on site at the marina where we went for dinner our first night. While we were eating, the bartender brought us two beers that she said another couple had sent to us. Once we finished eating, we joined the couple at the outside bar and enjoyed talking with them for a while and hearing about their fascinating story. As with a lot of Loopers, they did not have much prior boating experience before they started their Loop. They spent three months in the Bahamas last year and quickly decided they wanted to be able to “go further” so they bought a sailboat. After only five hours of sailboat training, they were off on their new adventure!

Since we were going to be in Iuka for 10 days, we rented a car so that Kevin could drop Ellen off in Birmingham for a visit with her grandsons and he could then go to Atlanta, pick up our one spare prop (no resolution yet from UPS on the “lost” prop) and have brunch with his daughter, Becca. Grammy had a wonderful time with Luke and Levi!

Prior to our road trip, we spent a day at Shiloh National Military Park. Shiloh is one of America’s best preserved battlefields, covers 4,200 acres and there are 156 monuments and 217 cannons in the park. We began our visit watching a video reenactment of the Battle at Shiloh which was fought April 6 & 7, 1862 and then drove around the grounds while listening to an audio tour. It was truly fascinating to listen to the descriptions of the battles fought on various battle fields while looking at the very spots these battles took place!

The Shiloh Log Church, built in 1851, gave name to the Battle of Shiloh. It was a critical location in the Battle of Shiloh and the site of some of the fiercest fighting of the battle. Ironically, Shiloh is a Biblical term meaning “place of peace”. The original log church was destroyed but a near exact replica using 150 year old hand hewn logs from the area was constructed in 1999.

We also walked around the Shiloh Indian Mounds where the Mississippian Indians lived from the 1100’s to the 1300’s in one of the largest and most impressive communities on the Tennessee River. There were six large mounds and dozens of smaller house mounds. The large mounds served as platforms for civic buildings, temples and homes of prominent leaders. The largest mound had a spectacular view of the Tennessee River on which we had traveled just two days prior to our visit to the park.

The Shiloh National Cemetery is also on the park grounds and was established in 1866. Buried here are about 4,000 soldiers, over half of whom are unknown. There were also three other burial grounds in the park where both Union and Confederate soldiers were buried where they had fallen during the battle.

Once back from Birmingham, we visited Ivy Green, the beautifully preserved birthplace of Helen Keller. The home was built in 1820 by Helen Keller’s grandparents and the birthplace cottage, situated nest to the main house, is were Helen’s parents settled once they were married. Between the main house and the birthplace cottage is the famous well pump where Helen first understood that the letters she was learning to spell in her hands represented actual words. Prior to this discovery, she just thought she was playing a game. Both homes are furnished with original Keller furniture.

Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880 with normal vision and hearing but was left blind and deaf after a high fever at the age of 19 months. By the time Helen was seven, the family had moved into the main house and had hired Annie Sullivan to be Helen’s teacher. The birthplace cottage was then used as the school house.

Helen proved early on to be quite gifted. Once she had learned her first word, “water”, at the well when she was seven, she quickly learned 625 words in six months and had mastered Braille by the age of 10. She graduated ‘cum laude’ from Radcliffe College and was the first blind person to earn a degree. Helen Keller died in 1968. The ashes of Helen, Annie Sullivan and their secretary, Polly Thompson, are entombed in St. Jospeh Chapel in The National Cathedral in Washington D.C. Helen had said she would not be buried there if she could not be buried with Annie and Polly.

Also on the tour with us was a lovely woman who is traveling the country by car and whose only companion on the trip is “Helen Bear”. Helen Bear was made about 15 years ago by a dear friend (now 90 years old) of our new friend. She had taken all of her mink coats and made bears out of them for her grandchildren and also gifted one to our new friend. She is taking Helen Bear with her as she visits places and taking pictures of Helen Bear for her friend similar to the Flat Stanley Project that elementary students complete. Ellen’s son, Nathan, made a Flat Stanley doll when he was in 1st or 2nd grade and mailed it to his Uncle Douglas who was living in Chicago at the time. Douglas took Flat Stanley around the city taking pictures at various points of interest and, once Flat Stanley was shipped back to Nathan, he presented the story of Flat Stanley’s travels to his class.

We took a picture of our new friend with Helen Bear in front of Helen Keller’s birthplace cottage and a picture of Helen Bear in Helen Keller’s crib (placed there by the docent!).

We also visited another Frank Lloyd Wright home, the Rosenbaum House, built in 1939. This was a very different style house than the Martin house we visited in Buffalo. The Martin House was one of Lloyd’s famous and grand Prairie style homes and the Rosenbaum House is Usonian. Usonian homes were Wright’s creation for middle-class families after the Great Depression. Designed to control costs, these houses would start off small, 800-1200 square feet, and could be added on to as families grew making them 1500-2600 square feet. Common features of Usonian houses are horizontal lines, flat roofs with overhangs, use of natural materials and board and batten walls. Also included are Wright’s other characteristic features such as open spaces, a central hearth and a lot of windows although the Usonian houses do not have Wright’s famous stained glass windows.

One interesting contrast we noticed between the two Wright houses that we have visited is that in the Martin House, Wright would not allow books to be seen and created hidden bookcases to house all of Martin’s books while in the the Rosenbaum House, he created open shelving for Rosenbaum’s books. Presumably, this was due to the difference in costs associated with each house. Both houses were furnished with Lloyd designed furniture with the Rosenbaum House having much more simplistic furnishings as opposed to the grand built-in furniture in the Martin House.

The front of the Rosenbaum House was designed to offer privacy while the back side of the house is filled with windows.

Once the Rosenbaum family had grown (they had four sons!) they contacted Wright to design an addition to their home. He added a much larger kitchen, a laundry room, a guest room and a bunkhouse/playroom for the boys in 1948.

An added bonus to our trip to the Rosenbaum House was that we ran into our new friend and Helen Bear again!

• 43.1 miles
• 5 hours 10 minutes
• 8.3 mph average speed
• 2-6 mph winds

After several days of traveling in a group, we have been traveling solo since we left Green Turtle Bay. There was one Looper at the marina when we arrived and three others came in later in the day.

We had a nice steak dinner at the restaurant at the marina (which took their last order at 6:00PM!).

• 49.5 miles
• 6 hours 6 minutes
• 8.1 mph average speed
• 2-4 mph winds

It was such a pleasant day of travel on Tennessee River on our way to Cuba Landing! We enjoyed looking at more of the start of the Fall leaf color changes. Once docked, the couple that runs the marina offered to let us take their car to town.

Loretta Lynn had passed away, at the age of 90, at her ranch in Hurricane Mills, TN the day before we arrived. She was the most awarded female country recording artist and the only female Artist of the Decade (1970’s). She signed her first record deal and released her first single in 1960 and had only stopped touring in 2017. Last year, at the age of 89, she recorded her 50th album, “Still Woman Enough”. Her ranch, where she raised her children and lived with her husband until his death in 1996, was about 15 miles from the marina.

It was late in the day when we got to the sprawling 3,500 acre ranch so we were only able to drive through and take a few pictures of her beautiful and beloved home. In addition to her home, Loretta Lynn’s Ranch also holds a large RV Park, campsites, cabins, hiking tails, a swimming pool, a replica of the home where she was born and raised and a Western Town with museums and shops and an historic Grist Mill. The Ranch is one of Tennessee’s top tourist attractions.

After leaving The Ranch, we had a wonderful home cooked dinner at the Log Cabin Restaurant. The building was originally built as a private home nearly 100 years ago and has been a restaurant since 1966.

• 43.7 miles
• 5 hours 5 minutes
• 8.6 mph average speed
• 4-6 mph winds

The leaves are just starting to change color and we are looking forward to when they peak in a few weeks.

We saw three Bald Eagles flying together:

Paris Landing State Park is where the 2022 Fall Rendezvous will be held the week after we were there. We biked over to the wonderful Lodge that was just completed in July to replace the existing Lodge. We had a great dinner at the restaurant while enjoying the stunning views of Kentucky Lake. The facilities there are top notch and we know that everyone will have a great time at the Rendezvous!

• 29.1 miles
• 4 hours 20 minutes (not counting 3 hours anchored above Kentucky Lock waiting for the okay to lock through and an hour waiting to get in marina)
• 6.7 mph average speed
• 7-11 mph winds

Five of us Loopers had to drop the anchor for three hours to wait for the commercial traffic to lock through Kentucky Lock.

When we were finally able to enter the lock, Perfect Match had to go to the very front about 4-5 feet from the lock wall. Kentucky Lock is huge and it was a little scary at first to be so close to the front of the lock but it was also thrilling to watch as the water rose to lift the boats some 57′. This is the second largest lock we will transit. The largest lock we will transit is the 84′ Whitten Lock where we will be in a couple of weeks.

Green Turtle Bay, which overlooks beautiful Lake Barkley, is a wonderful marina and a Looper favorite. There were over 30 Loopers docked at Green Turtle Bay when we were there. In addition to the 450 slip marina, there are three restaurants, a spa, a ship’s store, an indoor swimming pool and lovely vacation rentals. They have a courtesy van and golf carts as well as a shuttle that will take guests anywhere on the compound or to the town of Green Rivers which is about a mile away. We had lunch at The Thirsty Turtle after we arrived on Thursday, a wonderful Prime Rib dinner at the Commonwealth Yacht Club on Friday night and breakfast at Dockers on the Bay on Saturday. We enjoyed riding our bikes around the beautiful compound and to the town of Grand Rivers.

We saw deer each time we went for a bike ride.

Saturday was spent doing some boat cleaning, watching Ohio State beat Rutgers 49-10 and a bike ride to town for ice cream.

On Sunday, we took a golf cart to town and walked around Patti’s 1880’s Settlement which is a recreated historical log cabin village.

We stopped in Calvin Swine’s Moonshine & More for a moonshine tasting. This boutique liquor store was named by Patti’s husband, Bill, who had a pig named Calvin that he used to dress up, put on his leash and walk around the town of Grand Rivers and to the grocery store. He used to brag that Calvin liked to “down a little shine” in the evening. There were seven flavors of moonshine for us to choose from, four of them were inspired from the restaurant’s award-winning pies.

We went to dinner at Patti’s 1880’s Settlement on Sunday night with Never Land, Nice Landing and Gypsy. Patti’s was voted #1 for the Southern Living Magazine’s Readers Choice Award for Best Small Town Restaurant in the Southeast U.S. We had their famous 2′ thick Pork Chops and Flowerpot Bread. We both had enough Pork Chops left over to have for dinner the next night!

• 47.2 miles
• 5 hours 32 minutes
• 8.5 mph average speed
• 3-13 mph winds

The Olmsted Lock, at the confluence of the Ohio, Tennessee, Cumberland and Mississippi Rivers, was completed in 2018 and replaced two older locks which no longer met the demands of the shipping industry. More tonnage of things like coal, grain, rock and sand pass through this area than any other place on America’s inland rivers. The project was the most expensive lock and dam project in U.S. history, cost $3 billion and took more than 45 million labor hours to complete.

Paducah sits at the confluence of the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers. After a devastating flood in 1937, the Army Corps of Engineers built 3-mile-long concrete flood wall to protect the city. The Paducah Wall to Wall is a series of over 50 murals covering Paducah’s history from the early native Indian heritage to present day. Famed muralist Robert Dafford and his team of other muralists began work on the murals, which span three blocks, in 1996 and the project was completed in 2010. We enjoyed walking along the sidewalk and taking in the spectacular beauty of each of the murals. It is worth taking a look on paducahwalltowall.com to see photos of all of the murals!

Paducah was founded in 1827 by William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. We really enjoyed walking around historic downtown Paducah! It is much larger than most of the towns we have visited lately. We ended the day with a beer at Doe’s Eat Place, dinner at Max’s Brick Oven Cafe and ice cream at Forever Sweet Creamery. We were disappointed to learn the Craving the Curls Rolled Ice Cream shop was only open on the weekends as we were looking forward to watching them make the hand rolled ice cream and, of course, eating it!

Max’s Brick Oven Cafe was originally built to be a men’s apparel store by Russian immigrants in the 1880’s. Since then, it has been home to a pharmaceutical manufacturing company, an attorney’s office and several restaurants.

We had breakfast the next day at the Gold Rush Cafe which had bread pudding waffles. We did not even know such a thing existed but, oh my, they were delicious! We are going to have to make some one day!

We visited The National Quilt Museum which opened in 1991 and houses an extraordinarily impressive collection of contemporary quilts. It was truly amazing to see the work that went into these quilts – Kevin enjoyed the museum as much as Ellen did!

All of the quilts on display were amazingly beautiful! Below are some of our favorites:

We ended the day with a delicious dinner at The Freight House with Kay and Don from Never Land and walked along the Wall to Wall Murals on the way back to our boats. Kay was brave enough to order the Carp for dinner which was surprisingly delicious.

Hurricane Ian hit Florida while we were in Paducah. It is impossible to put in to words how heartbroken we were to see the devastating destruction to several marinas in addition to all of the homes and business that were destroyed. We learned of several Loopers who lost their boats, one, a family of four that has lived on their boat for the past six years who are very active in the AGLCA, and many more who were combing through online photos and posting on Facebook to try to locate their boats.

• 118.0 miles
• 9 hours 30 minutes
• 12.4 mph average speed
• 4-15 mph winds

Quite a lot was accomplished overnight by the dredging operators at the Kaskaskia Lock in contrast to what the area looked like when we arrived yesterday.