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07 October 2011

FREE AT LAST

     Twelve miles up the Ohio R. from Paducah (where the Tennesee flows into the Ohio)  we take a right turn onto the Cumberland R., a pleasant, winding stream, which has negligible current although we are still going up river and encounter fairly large tows on the tight bends.  This is a 30 mile detour which takes us to Barkley dam and lock and thence into the lakes region.  Barkley Lake is a 134 mile long lake with over 1000 miles of shoreline and Kentucky Lake, just to the west, is one of the largest man-made (no chicks were involved in its birth) lakes in the world…um universe.  It covers 160,000 acres and has 2,380 miles of shoreline.  “Quiet anchorages and modern marinas abound”  This is one of the prettiest places we’ve seen- it rivals the North Channel for beauty and cruising opportunities.  The water is a little muddy, but it’s warm.  Sailing, skiing, hiking, hunting, fishing, boating, and just farting around are all primo.  Check out the Land Between The Lakes , a 170,000 acre scenic playground with historic little towns and many campgrounds.  Great place for the whole fam damily. 
Just inside Kentucky L. we stayed at a “clean, well-lighted place” –Lighthouse Landing, a primarily sailboat marina.  RULE 21:  NO liveaboards.  Nice cottages and RV spots and many sailboats to 40’. Met a very cool guy who was a cross between Jim Harrison and Jimmy Buffet who gave me a 20 mile ride to get propane, and wanted to know if I needed to go into Paducah for some rum as this was a dry county.  Regrettably, I demurred.  We considered erecting our masts here, but, since we wanted to give them another coat of paint, we decided to wait until Mobile.  Of course the next 2 days we had winds on our six of 20 knots (and waves of 2+feet);  this gave us a nice push south.  Had two of the coolest anchorages anywhere in secluded coves, perfect weather, caught a mess of small striped bass on a little Cleo and two sizeable blue catfish on crawlers.  Chilly nights, warm days, morning fog, no bugs, colors just starting to change. 
In this area, the birds became much more plentiful:  kingfishers, swallows, finches, osprey, bald eagles, vultures, ravens, Great White  egrets (black legs), and especially the Great Blue Heron  distinguishable by its size and yellow beak.  Its numbers were only matched by the rod-pumping bass bashers in their sleek go-fast metal-flake machines.  Every quarter klic down the banks would be a svelte, stilted sentinel with its long curvaceous neck out-stretched, or with its head withdrawn and shoulders hunched like some gray-blue somber medieval bishop waiting its turn to move against the stilted castles of the humans perched on the steep, wooded bluffs in the ancient chess game of nature vs. man.  Whoa, easy, Dave.  We passed “many mansions” with incredible stone walls and stairways on the shores of the lakes that put the cottages of Lake Mich to shame.  Most seem to have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain in the last 10-15 years.  Too bad half of them are for sale. 
Working our way up The Tennessee R., we chugged languidly along in the late summer sunshine through the history of the 19th century.  Tours of antebellum mansions, plantations, towns with a dozen buildings on the Historic Places Register were accessible.  A woman at a small marina where we did a lunch stop  talked on the radio as if she had a mouthful of pralines and honey.  We stopped to shop in the ville of Clifton where our bikes took us along a country road to Main Street where all that was open were two newish banks, a brace of churches, a brick school, and an IGA.  A 60 year-old pharmacy, the barber shop, the restaurant, an old hotel, and various other small businesses were recently closed down.  A sweet palpable peace hung in the air like the leaf smoke in the autumn of my childhood.  We floated on the river past the Nathan Bedford Forrest forest, past the “Trail of Tears” where the Seminole and the Cherokee were marched to the barrens of Oklahoma in a “relocation” scheme, passed under the Natchez Trace,  and with Steve Earle on the stereo singing about Mc Cullough (sp.), :  “Don’t know what I’m fightin’ for/ I never owned a slave”- we swept past Shiloh.  Here, in April of 1862, 24,000 soldiers were either dead, wounded, or missing in an epic battle of the Un-Civil war.  I guess the blood of the fighters was the Roundup needed for the trees that “bore a strange fruit” (Lady Day Holliday). To paraphrase Hemingway,  Words like honor, valor, patriotism, courage didn’t have meaning anymore. It was only the names of places:  Antietum, Shiloh, Bull Run, Gettysburg, and Zutphen which carried any weight.  Now some of you folks might be getting’ a mite upset with talk like this from a no good non-veteran, carpet baggin’ pleasure boatin’, earringed, tattooed,  damnYankee comin down here flyin' his planet flag..  But please, we come in peace and sadness with hope for a little understanding.  And if that don’t get it, we kicked you’re a$$ once and we’ll do it again.  Come on, I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Please don’t hurt me.
THIS IS NO FUN

THIS IS FUN!

LIGHTHOUSE LANDING

CALIBAN'S CAVE

STRIPER
Also, we’d like to thank those of you who hold us in your thoughts and prayers for a safe journey.         Salaam alaikum.  Dave and Jan (who is not to blame)   







1 comment:

Gail Ring said...

I dare ya to talk like that in the great state of SC where we still proudly(?) fly the rebel flag.