Paducah, KY (October 11)

About an hour after I had given up on waiting and gone to bed, AMERICA took in her docking lines and started into the Kentucky Dam lock.  There was a lot of work being done on the other lock, putting it out of action, but I saw no indication that we had been waiting for upbound or downbound traffic.

We dropped down over 50 feet.

Looking up at tie-off points in the lock wall and
taken from the fifth deck of the riverboat. Before
we started, the top one was level with the first deck.

Note that the gates on the upriver side do not need
to extend all the way to the bottom of the lock. 

The Kentucky Dam is a significant producer of hydro-electric power.

It was worth getting up to watch, but I had to sacrifice a lot of sleep to do it.  Morning was going to come too early.

When it arrived, a cloudy sunrise gave way to rain with a breeze. We were approaching Paducah, KY.  I could feel the excitement within me building.  Paducah is home to the National Quilting Museum. Be still my heart. 

We headed out about 9:45, holding umbrellas at a 45° angle to block blown rain. 

The boat was again beached, so we disembarked from the bow and climbed a wide ramp to the Paducah flood wall.

Off to the left as we came through the wall was the River Discovery Center.  It was well-done and interesting. I had a chance to use a simulator to drive a towboat pushing barges at night going under a bridge.  I am pleased to report that the bridge remained intact after my turn at the control. 

Coming out of the River Discovery Center, we walked along looking at the flood wall murals depicting Paducah's history.

It is now time for me to eat some crow. The National Quilting Museum was great.

A day or two prior to arriving in Paducah, I had made a derogatory comment about the museum.  A friend we had made aboard - Nancy Nelson - mocked my preconceived idea. She was a quilter, so I was about to mentally write it off to being defensive, but she added that she had visited the museum before. She stated with confidence that what we would see was the antithesis of endless boring exhibits of grandma's patchwork quilt. She told me I would like it. She was so right.

made out of wood

Leaving the museum, we zig-zagged through the historic district of downtown Paducah. 

We visited the Lloyd Tilghman House and Civil War Museum. It was an  odd little museum with some interesting items.  

We continued on to the Paducah Railroad Museum, another odd one, again with some interesting items.  

Mikado locomotive 1518 - a 2-8-2

We decided to have lunch before returning to AMERICA and had a nice one at Shanties.

Coming out of the restaurant we had an unpleasant meteorological surprise. The temperature had dropped sharply and the wind speed increased.  The rain had returned as a fine, chilling mist. We decided that it was a good time to head back to the boat.

getting colder, causing mist to rise off the warmer water

We gathered outside AMERICA's bridge at 4:00 for a tour of it. The Captain-Navigator, former USCG Commander Johns, gave the tour. He was aboard to assist the Captain so that there was always a senior officer on deck when the boat was navigating the more challenging sections of the Ohio and Cumberland Rivers.  

The bridge was compact.  I was familiar with almost all the equipment other than the controls to the Azipod "Z" Drives.  The helm was manned and one drive engaged to hold the boat steady against the ramp given the combination of wind and current.

Mr. Johns explained (as previously mentioned in this blog) that although big enough to be considered a small ship, AMERICA was called a boat because it stayed in protected inland waters. The need to stay in protected waters made sense given AMERICA's dimensions and a draft of only 8 feet.

Mr. Johns also told us various statistics (supplemented by some from Wikipedia) about tows.  

• A typical barge carries 1500 tons of cargo, which is 15 times greater than a rail car and 60 times greater than one trailer truck. 
• An average river tow on the upper Mississippi River is 15 barges consisting of 5 barges tied together and moving 3 abreast. 
• On the lower Mississippi a tow going with the current can be as many as 42 barges (7 x 6) carrying the equivalent of more than 2,500 trailer trucks. The whole tow, excluding the towboat, can be over 1,200 feet long and 200 feet wide, covering over 6 acres. A tow going against the current is limited to 40 barges.  
• The larger "line-haul" (long distance) towboats used to push (they never pull) a tow can generate over 11,000 horsepower.  

pulling away from Paducah

Shortly after we got underway at 5:30, the captain came on the PA system and announced that due to high water on the Mississippi, we would be going to Cape Girardeau, MO (on the Mississippi) and spending an unscheduled night there before turning downriver and proceeding directly to Memphis. This deleted from the itinerary two more stops, one of 2-days in Saint Louis, MO, and the other a day in New Madrid, MO. Groan!