Apologies to the late Cornelius Ryan for bastardizing his title but that's truly what it felt like...
Our planned trip to Pittsburgh and beyond was dashed when the Corps moved a scheduled lock closure up a week. We could have made it there but getting back would have been an ordeal and several days waiting to get through. We ended up 90 miles short in Wheeling, WV. OK...enough of the whining and on to the trip!
As I said in the last post it was a whopping 8 mile day to the anchorage behind Riverbend Music Center and the Jimmy Buffett show! We were the first ones there at noon and got a good spot.
By concert time there were more boats and a great crowd inside from the sound of it. We were joined by looper friends on Still Waters II who happened to be on their way back down from Pittsburgh.
And friends at home were watching the concert on the computer and captured a few screen shots of the river. Thanks Bryan & Vickie!!
So the next day we were on our way upriver. Part of the charm of the Ohio above Cincinnati is how many small river towns there are and many have free docks or walls where you can tie up and visit the town. One of the early stops was Point Pleasant, WV. I'm sure you are all familiar with this town and the legend of the Mothman. You have heard of him, right?? We made sure to get to the museum before it closed so we could have at least 30 minutes for the tour...
Outside is the pride of Pt. Pleasant, the Mothman sculpture...
One of the things we were faced with on the way up was debris in the river. There had been rains upriver before we started up and some areas still had logs and such floating down. Below is one example at the Pt. Pleasant dock.
This one was from a different storm but it's an example of what can happen when the streams that flow into the river get a heavy storm. The big "blobs" in the picture are actually round bales of hay floating in the river!!
There are few marinas that handle a boat our size in this part of the river but the ones that we can get into have a ton of charm and "character". From the collection of "dock carts" at Holiday Point...
...to this fine whip we were able to use for a grocery run in Portsmouth, OH.
Another interesting dock we spent the night was an old lock wall. When the Ohio river locks were modernized many of the old locks were turned into parks by the local communities.
The scenery just kept improving the father we went upriver. The mountains come right down to the river and something new is around every bend.
Passing on the "two".
Speaking of Tows (I am now), we had an interesting experience after passing one heading upriver. I got a call on the radio to ask if I could "help him out". You never leave a boater needing help so, of course, I said yes! Turns out he had launched a crew boat (jon boat) to put a guy on shore and it quit running and was drifting down river. We went back and got a line on the boat...
And towed them back to the tow. I've never done a touch and go with a moving tow but we made it OK and Jill was calm and cool under pressure!!
And this is the price you pay for being a "nice guy". Aluminum and fiberglass don't play well together!
So, as I said before, Wheeling was the end of the trip for us. One bonus that helped ease the sting a bit was that we got there just in time for their annual Italian Fest held right on the riverfront!
On the way back we stopped in Marietta, OH which is a cool little town with a rich steamboat and river history. We took the dinghy a few miles up the Muskingum River to the first dam. The locks are some of the few hand operated locks still operating in the US.
On the way back downriver we tried to stop in the towns we didn't see on the way up. One morning we had a bit of delay due to fog. Even though we have AIS and radar it's supposed to be pleasure boating. The tows don't stop running in the fog and it would have been pretty stressful. Do you see the tow in the picture?
So we're back in Cincinnati for what has been another way too short visit. We didn't get to see people we had hoped to visit but hopefully we'll catch up with you all soon. We're heading out tomorrow for the run down the Ohio and back to the lakes of Kentucky and Tennessee before, eventually, continuing south to Florida for the winter. Tune into the tracker and NEBO to follow along...
BTW, the Mayflies are back in Cincinnati.
