- 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.
