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then south along the river through fields
to Cairo, etched in my memory from Huck and Jim so many years ago, a town that was once something important, especially after the Civil War when all imports coming up the river from New orleans paid tariffs at the Cairo Customs House.
Time has passed it by, as so many other towns across the country, now a main street of once nice now empty buildings.
Down to the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, the point of land between a grassy park with big cottonwoods, once the site of Civil War Fort Defiance. The Ohio is a big river - campground host claimed last big water the Ohio backed up the Misissippi. True or not, it was just about the same size this day. Both rivers alive, calm, beautiful, so much more interesting than reservoirs, even lakes.
And I once again crossed the path of Lewis and Clark. I had not known that the Corps of Discovery actually started their voyage from Pittsburgh down the Ohio River with the 55 foot keelboat in August of 1803. They boated to the confluence, where someone in the party caught a 128 pound blue catfish, then proceeded up the Mississippi where Lewis wintered in St Louis, while Clark and the Corps wintered across the Mississippi in Illinois. From the journals it's not clear how they weighed the fish maybe they carried a scale? http://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/read/?_xmlsrc=1803-11-16.xml&_xslsrc=LCstyles.xsl
I left Lewis and Clark with their catfish, and tuned away from the Mississippi,
crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky, many barges on the river, including coal barges
and drove to Paducah at the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers for breakfast, light and fluffy biscuits holding up well to heavy sausage gravy. Nice old downtown, trying with some success to come back to life,
helped by the nearby quilt museum and the nice historical murals on the floodwall, painted by Robert
Dafford
http://robertdaffordmurals.com/Gallery_Paducah/Portfolio-Paducah.htm
The floodwall opens to a nice park along the river, where the first ever Paducah dragonboat festival will be held this weekend, sponsored by the river museum as a way to help people see the Ohio River as a recreational, not just a working river.
But there were many barges and tugs in the river, clearly this is a big working river.
I crossed the Tennessee River on and old bridge, new one in progress cantilevered way over the river, wondering what caused the river's crazy winding path to the Ohio,
then ollowed along the river on narrow Hwy 60, then 137 through Birdsville, Bayou, Joy, Hwy 135 through Tolu, farm country, corn and soybeans the crops of the heartland in the flat bottomland, much woodland and nice views of the river.
I boarded a 9 car ferry for a ride across the Ohio to Cave-in-Rock, people in lawn chairs on the shore watching the action
then north on Illinois , east back into Kentucky at Old Shawneetown, Hwy 56 to Henderson, rural but busy, people coming and going, took the Audubon Parkway 30 miles to Owensboro, sjipped the town adn drove southeast on Hwy 54, another pretty country road through Whitesville, the road lined with garage sales, many huge, for 30 miles.
Somewhere along here I saw for the first time tobacco, I think, growing in fields and later saw people cutting it by hand and stacking in sheaves, like rice in Japan.
Stopped for the big doings in Fordville - booths, food, music, small carnival, one car car show, deserted stage waiting for maybe the talent show, local folks out on the town. Life in a small town.
From Leitchfield, south on Hwy 259, busy, many houses, large grass fields with horses, lost the way but at dusk finally found Nolin State Park on a reservoir formed by a dam on the Nolin River.
Camped under tall pines, welcome end to a long day.
