It’s a Big Dam Country — Day 15

From Ash­land, KY to Lawrence­burg, IN.

Nev­er far from rain­ing at any point. I had the top down a cou­ple of times but always had to stop to put it back up with­in half an hour. I’m get­ting a lit­tle tired of the misty, atmos­pher­ic stuff.

Start­ed with the Greenup Lock and Dam. 

Greenup is a lit­tle odd because they built the bridge right behind it. From a dis­tance it looks like they just plopped the bridge deck on top of the dam.

I got a nice shot of the hoist that runs on rails above the spill­way to lift the gates.

The last dam yes­ter­day and both dams today were sur­round­ed with huge pic­nic grounds. You can get a good long view from the pic­nic shel­ters but the ground slopes quick­ly down below the lev­el of the locks and by the time you reach the chain link fence you’re shoot­ing up at the sky (and you have wet feet.)

The Ohio Riv­er Val­ley nev­er lets you for­get that it is a val­ley. No mat­ter how broad it gets or how far you seem to be from the riv­er you can always see the hills on the oth­er side.

Mail Pouch Tobac­co is about the only sign you still on barns around here. The barns are in var­i­ous states of repair but the signs are all weath­ered to just about this degree. There must have been one last sum­mer of sign painting. 

In Man­ches­ter Ohio I saw these folks set­ting up the car­ni­val rides for this week­end’s Car­ni­val at the Riv­er Barn.

Before the push to mod­ern­ize the lock and dam sys­tem on the Ohio there were more than 50 small­er locks. Num­ber 34 was Chi­lo Lock in Chi­lo, Ohio. There is a park, his­tor­i­cal muse­um, and nature pre­serve there now.

This is the lock house.

The Ohio Riv­er tra­di­tion of park­ing boats in the grass con­tin­ues with the Jen­nie Wade being up on blocks here.

Arty pad­dle wheel shot. 

This pile of mess is actu­al­ly two steam engines from the Waker­obin which was built in 1926 for the Light­house Ser­vice (lat­er Coast Guard) and most recent­ly serv­ing as the USS Night­mare, a haunt­ed Hal­loween attrac­tion. She sank in 2005 at Hebron, KY. There are sup­posed to be plans afoot to restore the engines. I doubt much can be done with them. 

But they do make cool rusty subjects.

The last dam of the day (rainy of course) Cap­tain Antho­ny Mel­dahl Locks and Dam. 

Two views look­ing at the dam behind the locks. One from slight­ly upstream and one from slight­ly downstream.

Using a long lens I was able to get this shot of one the of Corps of Engi­neers’ main­te­nance boats. It’s kin­da cute — don­cha think?

That was the last stop of the day. Then I got colos­sal­ly screwed try­ing to get through Cincin­nati via ⁵²⁄₅₀ at 4PM. Went a whole bunch north that I did­n’t mean to. End­ed up in Lawrence­burg, Indi­ana home of the Argosy Casi­no. Or some­thing like that. 

Today’s Route:

View It’s a Big Dam Coun­try — Day 15 in a larg­er map

Lyric of the Day: (I heard it twice it stopped me cold both times.)

The look on your face yanks my neck on my chain.

(Neko Case)