Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Paradise Found - Day 17 - Paducah to Grand Rivers, KY

At 5:00 PM we pulled into the Green Turtle Bay Marina, the most beautiful marina that we've visited to date (and we have cruised all but a few harbors on Lake Michigan).  Details later.

Tuesday began, like other days at anchor, with attention to Kodi's basic needs.  Again, we launched the dingy and Kodi and I zipped to the Paducah launch ramp.  Kodi and I then toured Paducah's charming dowtown area.  You can view the photos we took by clicking here.

Unlike previous days, where we focused on making tracks, today, we lingered at anchor until close to noon as we only had 45 miles to cover.

Departing Paducah (Cuba Towhead) at 11:36AM, we joined the Ohio and headed east joining Cumberland at 1:00 PM.


Federal Mooring Cells at the entrance to the Cumberland

The Cumberland is distinguished by its narrow deep channel.  Like the Ohio, it was relatively free of debris.  Scenery worth photographing was minimal as indicated by the photos below.





We had a choice of the Tennessee or the Cumberland to get us to Green Turtle Bay.  The Cumberland, while slighly longer in distance, is preferred as there is less commercial traffic reducing the potential for delay at the lock.

We arrived at the Barkley Lock at 4:13 PM and 8 minutes later entered the lock to be lifted 57 feet into Lake Barkley, the man-made lake ceated by the dam.  Note: The lock and dam is named after their favorite sun, Alben Barkley, who served as US Senator and Vice President in the Truman Administration.


Barkley Lock and Dam

You get a sense of the lift from this photo.  This time we are going up.
Diana expertly handled our tie-up to a floating bollard.

Diana confiently holding the line

We tied to the lower bollard
The lock filled surprisingly quickly and 23 minute later we exited onto Lake Barkley and immediately pulled into the Green Turtle Bay Marina. 

You can see the high water mark
We pulled up to gas dock, took on 206.4 gallons of fuel (at $3.37 per gallon) and arranged to pull the boat on Wednesday to check the damage to the props.

After tie-up in our assigned slip, we quickly discovered that Green Turtle Bay is both a marina and resort.  Instead of photos, we thought you would enjoy looking at their website.  Check it out to see the scope of this lovely facility.  The dockage is $60.18 per night and that includes access to the health club and yacht club.

Dinner was a Patti's 1800 Settlement, another "you must experience" place highly recommended by friends who have done the loop.  Patti's is famous for two inch pork chops, large servings, a unique atmosphere, reasonable (low by Chicago standard) prices and outrageous deserts.  It's also a top knotch Christmas shop.  They also did a first class job with the salmon I ordered and my "Boatsinker" dessert (dark double fudge pie topped with coffee ice cream, piled high with whipped cream, "drizzled" with chocolate syrup and topped with a cherry) was both aptley named and memorable.  Another discovery, we are in a DRY county.  Thank goodness for our well stocked wine cabinet.


Les and Diana at Patty's.  Note the Christmas decorations

Self explanatory
Post Script: My midnight walk with Kodi was magical. Quiet, moderate temperature and a clear view of the stars,  I also discovered extensive Octoberfest type decorations, which I photograped on our Wednesday morning walk.









Written by Les

1 comment:

  1. Green Turtle looking beautiful as always! Sorry I forgot to mention that that county is dry. The good news is that the county in which Paducah is located is not.

    Did I tell you that the "Super Wal-mart" in Paducah is a good place to provision? I kept asking for a grocery store and the answer was always the Wal-mart. Since I generally dislike those places, I persisted in trying to find another store. I finally had to give up and found it is pretty well stocked and we were even able to find things one might not expect in Paducah Kentucky. I imagine Green Turtle still has the courtesy van(s) that you could use.

    Two years ago, there was also a pretty nice wine store on one of the side streets off the main drag on which the Wal-mart is located, but for the life of me I cannot remember the location or name. Maybe trying yellowpages.com would help find it.

    The IGA in Grand Rivers is okay for some basics, but I don't think you could really shop there!

    ReplyDelete