It’s a Big Dam Country — Day 16

Lawrence­burg Indi­ana to Louisville Kentucky. 

Start­ed the day late but I only had one dam on the list and the dis­tance to Louisville from Lawrence­burg isn’t much.

But first a stop for some buz­zard pic­tures. A deer car­cass on the shoul­der had 5 or 6 birds already work­ing on it. A fur­ther 10 or so sat on the ridge of the two barns nearby. 

I got a lucky shot of one of them leaving.

So some­where out there, in the mid­dle of the sort of coun­try that hosts buz­zards on barn roofs you will crest a rise and see — this:

One of the infa­mous “float­ing” casi­nos. Sigh.

Mark­land Locks and Dam spans the Ohio Riv­er between Flo­rence and Mark­land Indiana. 

I start­ed on the Indi­ana side look­ing at the down­stream side of the dam.

Then crossed the bridge to the Ken­tucky side to see what I could see. There’s an obser­va­tion tow­er over­look­ing the locks.

For all the barge traf­fic that is sup­posed to exist on the Ohio Riv­er I have only seen two. Both glimpsed through the trees as I was dri­ving. I hoped to see a barge go through the locks. No such luck. I did get to watch this lit­tle fish­ing boat make it’s way through. 

First they close the gate at the upstream end of the lock. The boat goes in and ties up.

Then the water lev­el starts to drop. I don’t know how they move the water out. There was no obvi­ous outflow.

Final­ly they open the gate at the down­stream side of the lock.

I got shots of anoth­er of the main­te­nance boats. This time much clos­er but with the dang fence in the way. This one is named Gibson.

At most of the dams there has been a cer­tain amount of trash washed up against the dam. Most­ly tree branch­es. At Mark­land there was tons of trash. Ugly mess.

That was the only dam for the day. It was last thing I’ll see on the riv­er for awhile. About thir­ty miles form Mark­land at Madi­son Indi­ana the roads in both states take a turn way from the riv­er. From there down to Cairo there only a few places where the through roads fol­low the riv­er. I’m not sure how I’ll han­dle the rest of the trip down the Ohio Riv­er. If I con­tin­ue to try to fol­low the riv­er at all. 

I did find a num­ber of odd­i­ties on the rest of my drive.

This is the first barn I’ve seen with an adver­tise­ment for some­thing oth­er than Mail Pouch tobac­co. Still tobac­co though. Ken­tucky Club. There’s also a Mail Pouch ad on the oth­er side. Not sure how the own­er man­aged that.

Con­tin­u­ing the theme of boats parked in the grass, three tugs up on blocks. The Susie B, the Elsie B, and one whose name I could­n’t find.

I’ll end with three shots from Louisville.

A cre­ative way to paint those lit­tle poles in park­ing lots. There was an entire row of them.

The barista who made my life sav­ing cof­fee last night. I promised to put him in the blog.

The coolest BBQ wag­on I’ve seen in a long time. There was no one in res­i­dence so I could­n’t ask ques­tions about it. (Love that it has a smok­er too.)

There won’t be much to post this week­end. I hope to get to McAlpine locks and the dam behind Falls of the Ohio on Sun­day. I’ll be back on the road on Mon­day. No plan for which direc­tion I’ll be head­ing just yet.

Today’s Route:

View It’s a Big Dam Coun­try — Day 16 in a larg­er map