Tuesday, Nov 4 - Cumberland River and Barkley Dam

Today we traveled the rest of the way up the Ohio to the Cumberland River. The picture here shows how small this river is compared to what we have become used to. The reason it is so small is that it is dammed by the Barkley Dam which is one of the largest in the US. It has a lift of 57', and the other picture here was taken after we were in the chamber and the huge doors were closing behind us. We will have one more large dam later in our trip when we travel down the Tennessee River.

Tonight we pulled into the Green Turtle Bay Marina which is between Barkley Lake (formed by this dam) and Kentucky Lake which is formed by the Kentucky Dam that is almost the same size. This is one of the premier marinas in the US (another Quimby's five anchor), and we plan to spend three nights here so we can get our oil changed, get caught up on our laundry, catch our breath, have more than one drink a night, etc etc. (Nettie, we might even have a "scooby dooby do" night here).

An interesting note for the folks in the St. Croix area - we walked around to look at all the boats for sale here (and there are many) and we came upon a big 72' houseboat with the name "Stephane J" on the side. Yup, it is Steve Burghs (sorry Steve if I misspelled your name) old boat that used to be in the Bayport Marina. As we are finding out as we travel down river, the boating community is a small world. We are now parked next to the same couple we met over a week ago in Dubuque who are headed on a great loop trip.

More on the Marina activity later.