Henderson, KY (October 09)

We set our clocks back one hour during the night. 

Pam & I awoke at about 6 o'clock as we went through a lock. I stepped out of our cabin onto our terrace in my pajamas and bare feet. Yikes! It was an invigorating 45ﾟ outside under clear skies.

By 7:30, we were passing Evansville, Indiana in the Southwest corner of the state, rounding a 180ﾟ bend in the river on route to Henderson, KY.

Henderson (circled) is in the lower right-hand corner 

Departing AMERICA, we climbed an impressively large U-shaped launching ramp both in its breadth and height. 

Numbers in the centerline indicated the height

of the ramp above normal water level. 

At the top of the ramp was a statue of Admiral Husband E. Kimmel. Born in Henderson, he was the commanding officer when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Disgraced in the wake of the attack, in 1999, he was posthumously exonerated.

Henderson was the birthplace of W.C. Handy who dubbed himself "Father of the Blues" and was certainly a major influence in that music style.

A more widely known, long-time resident of Henderson was John James Audubon, the famous American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. It was suggested that we walk around the town looking at bronze sculptures created by Raymond Graf from Audubon's "Birds of America". We were assured that after we did that, we would still have time to catch a shuttle bus out to the Audubon Museum and Nature Center. 

John James Audubon 

The walk with one of the lecturers took us by several of the sculptures. I don't know how many sculptures are scattered around the downtown area, but the spacing between the ones we saw suggests either Henderson is bigger than I thought or there are not exactly a whole bunch of them.

Along the way we visited the Carnegie-built library which had some personality.

Pam & I hoofed it back to the shuttle bus stop to catch a ride out to the museum. We saw the bus departing as we got close, turning onto another street before we could flag it down. We waited and waited for it to come back, but it never did. We learned later that the driver had been given a schedule that suspended the shuttle for a while in the middle of the morning. It was to be yet another in a continuing series of miscommunications with the ACL tour director.

Having seen a number of Audubon's works over the years, we decided not to find a way to get to the reportedly modest-sized museum. Instead, we opted to use the time to go to the local drug store for a few things. We had been told it would be the closest one in any port.

Purchases in hand, we walked a few side streets at the north end of town admiring some of the houses.

We returned aboard and continued downriver.

We came to the John T. Myers Locks and Dam. 

While we were transiting through the 1200' lock, an up-bound tow was transiting the 600-foot lock. The size of the "tow" (the combination of barges and towboat) required it to be broken in half, the first half being raised and pulled out while the second half waited its turn.

As the day ended, we were proceeding to the mouth of the Cumberland River, where we would leave the Ohio, going upriver for a port call in Dover, Tennessee tomorrow.

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Down (arrow) on Ohio River, then up (arrow) on Cumberland River