Taking Time off in Green Turtle Bay, Kentucky, and Moving On.

I have had to give myself permission not to blog, for the last few days. We have been busy, but we also needed time out, after our journey down the Mississippi. Five days on the move is plenty, before needing to take a break.
We couldn't have chosen a prettier place to break our journey, frankly. Being docked in a covered slip has its benefits (sun shade) but also means we have much still water around us, therefore LOTS of mozzies. Waz is the one who gets eaten, so it isn't an ideal place for him, but we figger the benefits outweigh the insects.

The leaves are slowly turning color, but the weather is still in the 80's. They are about to get a hurry-along though, with a cold snap due this weekend.

It is a long walk to the office and the ablution block near there, so we have used our own facilities. We will get a pumpout when we leave on Saturday.

It is a large marina with around 300 slips for both yachts and power boats. The latter mostly being under cover. The Yacht Club is the elevated building. They have a restaurant with high prices!

 Such a pretty place and the walking was good for us. Always lots going on and plenty to see as well as keeping up with all the Loopers coming and going...of which there was plenty. Every day there were new arrivals and new departures. It was good to catch up with old acquaintances.

 Looking out the gap to Barkley Lake.

 Our daily walk took us past these lovely trees. Past the Boat Works where the Boat Lift was nearly always in operation hauling boats out. Lots of damaged props to be removed and sent away!

 These were waiting for the next transport out to be fixed. Rocks and logs in the Mississippi, but I think it was probably the rocks in the Weir Dams that did this kind of damage.

One day we walked down to the Beach that is on Lake Barkley. It would have had a great view except for the two tows leaning against the Dauphin (round things), waiting to go through the Barkley Lock.

I made a whole wheat Pizza base for this delicious Pizza one night. It was so good we are going to do it again soon:) fresh Pinapple, bacon, olives, cherry tomatoes and cheese! Yummo!

We rented a golf cart for an hour another day to go into the local Grand Rivers township to post mail, and while there we went to look through the new Market and also bought an Ice-cream.
The market has just opened, and we were hopeful that we could get a 'good' cup of coffee there. Alas, it was all drip coffee!:( The market was nice though we didn't buy anything. Just looked. We already had supplies.

 The main road in the small settlement of Grand Rivers, on the Land Between The Lakes.

 Lots of fun driving at 5mph along beautiful country roads in a Golf Cart.

These condos are part of the Green Turtle Bay Resort and Marina. They looked quite nice,....for condos! Pretty surroundings, anyway.

 The rail line goes behind the Marina and we heard the train both night and day.

 Bird houses:)

 We walked up to the main road, on a very warm and humid day, to see if we could find the store in town, but we went the wrong way. Well, never a wrong way when you have a camera in hand!:)

We borrowed the courtesy car from the marina on Sunday and drove the 30 mins into Paducah to go to the supermarket. We had the car late in the day (3.30pm) . After buying our food supplies for the week, we only made it as far as the McDonalds down the road before deciding we would be too hungry when we got home, if we didn't have a snack now.
There was a get together and celebration for one of the Loopers crossing their wake, at 5.30pm, but we were late. I had made a chocolate cake earlier in the afternoon, for the pot-luck, and all I had to do was frost it, before going to join the crowd. We were surprised by how many Loopers were there. Good to get together with so many and exchange information and lots of laughs. Nice that we can laugh at everything AFTERWARDS!

We had the car again at 5.30pm on Wednesday and went into Paducah to Sam's Club. We had arranged to go to a Thai combo kind of restaurant for dinner and were very happy with our choice of Sushi for dinner. I didn't take photos, sorry!

We then went to Baby's R Us. This was an exploratory visit for me to measure cribs and other baby 'stuff' as I am sewing the bunting for the new grandchild's crib et al. We were fascinated and not a little disturbed by the prices and the 'stuff' available for moms and dads....most of it unnecessary! How on earth did we do the parenting thang without all those things?:)

We came out of there feeling a bit exhausted by choices and the sheer volume of product.

I don't like driving strange vehicles at the best of time...especially ones like the Jeep Cherokee owned by the Marina, with 250,000 miles on the clock. The steering had LOTS of play in it, and doing 70mph on the freeway was more than a little uncomfortable!. We had used the courtesy Van on Sunday and that was preferable, but not available.

Friday was Boat cleaning day. The weather had changed already and it was cooler than the 80's we had enjoyed all week. It was good to give our baby a really good clean, as she was covered in dead insects and dust.

4.30pm we picked up the Jeep again for our final supermarket trip into Kroger in Paducah. This time we took Terry with us. She and Ken had to leave their boat at Hoppies to make a sudden trip back to Long Island for the funeral of Ken's brother. They arrived at the Marina on Thursday, and it was good to be able to help them out with their groceries too. We both went to Walmart afterwards for various odds and sods, leaving there to go home as the sun was setting. In the time from when we left the marina to arriving at the supermarket, the outside temperature had dropped 20 degrees. Terry didn't have a jacket with her and she froze. Waz and I had fortunately taken ours with us.

 A storm was forecast, and the sunset was stunning as a result. We made it home just on dark.

We are due to leave the Marina in the morning. We returned to car to the parking lot and walked back to the boat in the cold...with lots of extra clothes on! Amazing how that temperature had dropped.

We were happy to be sleeping with cooler temps tonight, as the heat was not fun, at night. We had the tech come to the boat to gas up the aircon in the bedroom, on Friday morning, which we could have done with the previous week!

We had replaced one of the start batteries at Sam's Club (one reason for going there!), as it was the only battery we hadn't replaced yet. Waz says it dated from about 2005, so it had done well. We have all new batteries now! yippee! We also purchased some more oil. They have the best price at Sam's.


I nearly forgot! Thursday afternoon, I took a bunch of clothing out of the closet and set the sewing machine up on the fly deck (it was cooler up there) and set about altering all the clothes...mostly trousers/capris/shorts that were way too big for me. I couldn't justify throwing them out of giving them to goodwill, as I have done earlier, as they were hardly worn. Some I took in as much as three inches, but mostly 1-2 inches, depending on when I had bought them in the weight-loss cycle.

I had a time limit on this as we had to be up at the parking lot outside Dockers Café at 5pm for the Loopers Appreciation dinner put on by the Marina management to say Thanks to the Loopers for their business. We are a large part of the transient clientele for the Marina and they are grateful for the income...I guess. They provided a typical Kentucky Bar-B-Q..not what Kiwis think of as bar-b-q, at all. This was Pork and Mutton slow cooked (that's what it appeared to be) and then shredded/ground with a Kentucky Bourbon sauce. It had an interesting tang to the taste..especially the mutton/ It wasn't unpleasant, but it wasn't that nice either. This was served with hamburger buns (put the meat in the bun) shredded cole slaw a la Kentucky Fried Chicken (well, Colonel Sanders was from Kentucky!) and pork and beans which has lots of brown sugar in it. They also made their own crisps which were ok. I didn't eat the bun, but chose the crisps (potato chips, for the kiwis!) and Waz had a bun AND crisps:) The food was not something my stomach liked in particular and I suffered the rest of the evening! I guess we get used to eating our own kind of food and any deviation has to be carefully thought out, especially food with spices and sugar. However, it was good, again, to get together with all the other boaters/Loopers and meet new people and exchange farewells with many of those we knew who were moving on down the rivers.


Dockers is the little building on the left behind the car, and they had erected a tent in the parking lot for us.  We were served by the Marina staff.

Saturday (today)

We were up with the alarm at 7am, showered and off to get my handbag out of the vehicle, which I had left it in the night before. Duh! I normally wear the bag across my body, but this was a different bag. We went to Dockers for breakfast to meet Connie and Joe who had arrived Friday afternoon. Joe had dinghied over to us to say hello just before we were due to go shopping.  They had seen us on AIS and came looking for us:)  They arrived at Dockers with other friends, who it was good to meet and we all enjoyed the fellowship over a meal.

They too were leaving this morning, and were gone before we cast off the lines.

It is always good to get back out on the water, and today was no exception....except there was wind!  The day we decided to  leave, we have wind to contend with. Getting onto the fuel dock for a pumpout was a bit challenging. That accomplished, we backout out, turned her around and took our baby out onto Lake Barkley again. We didn't like the wind in particular, but also didn't want to sit around in the marina any longer. We needed to move on. Taking the channel between Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake, we were surprised how high the wind was, and once out into Kentucky Lake, the white caps!

Time to leave.

 The slip we vacated

 The fuel dock we are headed for, on the left. The wind blew us onto the dock.

 After turning around, we headed out through the narrow channel into Lake Barkley

 Not far around the corner and we are into the channel between the two man-made lakes. We turned right, around the little yacht. The rented house boat went out onto Lake Barkley. They were having more trouble with the wind than we were, at this stage. It was like a funnel coming down the channel, and the wind was directly on our nose, and it was COLD!

Before making the turn into the channel...the trees are so lovely:)

 The bridge over the channel is being repaired. You cant see Kentucky Lake yet, so we were in for a surprise when we turned the corner.

 Making the turn into the Barkley Canal.

 This is what awaited us. This little boat was having a hard time making any headway with the 30 knot wind gusts and the very choppy lake with abundant white caps.

 Kentucky Lake...ack! It was hard going, but we didn't rock and roll enough for things to go flying. I did make a tour of the boat and put things down on the floor though. We didn't want any damage, inside.

 There were a lot of yachts out on the lake...they had been racing, and now heading back to Barkley Lake. This is what sail boats are built for! These folks were way too busy sailing to wave back at us. Cant say I blame them.

 ...and this one!

 There are little bays with SOME shelter, all along the coastline, but we are headed for somewhere else.

 The bay on the left is much larger, deeper and more sheltered, we believe, than any of the others. We just have to get around that shallow spit and follow the deep water in.

 Someone else was in our spot, but no matter....

 We were aiming for the + on the chart. We thought we might be more sheltered there.

 You can see that leaving the rough lake behind was a good idea. There was chop and SOME white caps at  various times, but the wind did eventually calm down...a bit.

 This area is a National Park with some camping nearby. Lots of little fishing boats out and about us today.

 The little beach is opposite where we anchored in 13 feet of water. The anchor took very quickly and we feel very safe here. Nowhere to go if we drag, put it that way.

The sun set, the wind died and the fog has rolled in. There is supposed to be a frost in the morning, so that means VERY Cold temps around here. We are cold sitting in the salon, so bed is looking awfully good right now.

I made a delicious pumpkin soup for dinner with some cheese and chive wholemeal scones. Very yummy, and filling....topped off with fresh strawberries and cream, and cup of real loose leaf tea!
Time to hit the sack and sleep well. It is great going to bed to the sound of the water lapping the hull. We had torrential rain on Friday night, and the sound of it on the iron roof overhead woke us both up. We ended up standing on the cockpit deck watching the trees swing wildly and the rain pounding down. Not tonight tho.
Ciao for now.