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This is a reprise of that same Evansville to Vevey road. I’ll bet if I offered a third cut, I’d still have photos to share although as the weather got rainier and windy, the photography got worse results. These are the best I could do. AEP Mariner was upstream bound.
Rampstop was providing all supplies needed, rain, shine, cold, or hot.
I couldn’t make out the name of the small tug here.
Robert R. Aldrich appears to be the newest vessel for Evansville Marine.
That sandbar is marked on AIS as Poon Saloon, a place you may remember reading about in the summer of 2022. The camper was nowhere to be seen.
Related or not, not far away was this dredge, one of several I saw working on the river.
Excell Marine’s Randy Anderson passes the Nucor mill in Ghent KY.
By now, we’ve crossed over into Kentucky for a back door entrance to Cincinnati via Covington KY. Earth to KY looks like an interesting place to stop some day, and
ditto Anchor Grille, right around the corner, but we were headed elsewhere,
back into Indiana and out of the rain
passing another roadside sign of the season.
All photos, any errors, WVD.
We followed a mostly river road from Evansville to Vevey. Again, I’ll use some signage-shortcuts to tell part of the story.
Lankford Cave in Rockport
was shelter for some North Carolinians over two centuries ago.
I had personal reasons for visiting New Albany, a town of great murals.
Lewis and Clark may have turned around at the Pacific, but they met along the Ohio near Louisville KY.
I took the greatest number of photos in Madison IN. This mural rewarded me when I went up close to read
the info on the paddle box, the Island Queen of the Coney Island Inc. It turns out there’s a Coney Island amusement park along the Ohio near Cincinnati. Interesting mural too.
Which gives higher profits for corn– feed, food or drink?
See lower right.
For summer movies in the Bicentennial riverfront park, Top Gun sounds like a great choice. But Madison? Click on the link.
Any idea why this peaceful riverfront is home to Rockin’ Thunder?
Here’s part of the explanation, following on that movie.
Marathon’s Martinsville here pushes
six fuel barges down bound on the river underneath the Milton-Madison Bridge. According to this new release, Marathon owns almost two dozen boats and almost 250 barges!
Farther east, we arrive at Vevey, another town name along the river memorializing the Swiss who first settled there. Check out Tell City, where we also stopped. Speaking of memorials, I didn’t understand these three columns along the water until I walked as close to the river as I could without getting wet feet.
Mimicking the stacks of the Ghent Generating station, the Vevay columns illustrate how high the river level was in 1937. From Evansville to here, we saw references to this flood.
All photos, any errors, WVD, who thinks a trip along the Ohio in summer might be fun! More Ohio River posts here.
Two tows lined up at McAlpine Locks and Dam before sunrise. The first, Mackenzie Rose but not the saltwater one, was upbound but it was too dark to get photos.
A static display held my attention as I waited for more light.
Anyone find info on this style of dredge tender Whitewater? I could not.
Next through the lock intrigued me with the name
as you can see in the title and below. I knew there had to be a story. And here’s one version of that story, and delayed by Covid-19, here’s a short video of the christening in Nashville.
A short time later, I caught the towboat
passing the Duke Energy Gallagher Station in New Albany IN
All photos, any errors, WVD, with more to come.
On the road again, and that doesn’t mean on the boat again, but this blog is still called tugster; therefore, you might guess where I’m generally heading. Speaking of guessing, this airport art provides some clues, ie, a county in this state produced three astronauts and a different county was birthplace of the first flyers.
Since this is the first of a batch, excuse the context photos of found image/text. These do fit into the tradition of objet trouvé. Since you know the location now, I’m not spoiling the suspense by stating that the Ohio and tributaries comprise 2500 miles of navigable commercial waterway.
To get from my starting point to the river, I HAD to finally visit this place. If this were a landmark hotel blog, I’d go on and on. All I’ll say here is it’s a must see; it reminded me of Mohonk Mountain House in its sublimity, its magic. It’s not Coleridge’s Xanadu, but lots of lines from that poem could describe this place, especially in this season.
Nearby, like other Christmas trains, this one was warming up, clanging locomotive bells instead of sleigh bells, but we had a river to get to and this train was not headed that way.
After passing the Rockport Works, we got to the river here at Rockport in time to see a tow heading upstream under the Natcher Bridge.
The tow moved coal
and after hopscotching, we got ahead of it as the rain started. Here’s more on M/V Ginger Moller.
We then headed to Evansville and here’s a line of context atop the levee.
Enjoy.
This is a select (by me) set of signs.
Tis’ the season. I’d have edited out the liquor list, but I wanted to keep the dramatic sky and the wires. As photogenic as the “distressed” jeepster is, it seems a waste to leave it out in the weather this way.
All photos, WVD, who’s staying on the road for a while. I’m out playing truckster too.
Answers to above questions here: astronauts and a flyer.
More inland waterways here, here, and here.
The first half of January 2013–a decade ago–was one long gallivant, taking in New Orleans to St Louis to Pittsburgh and then back home. In the spirit of these retro posts, let me start here, shooting right off the Algiers ferry. Barbara E. Bouchard is now Dann M’s Turquoise Coast, which I’ve not seen.
No stroll in the night life of Nola is complete without a stop at Igor’s Checkpoint Charlie, combo bar, music venue, and laundromat!!
Following the river by car, we next stopped in Baton Rouge, and among the dozens of boats, enjoy this one–Ned Ferry–with a sixth boro connection: It was built in 1959 Pittsburgh for Pennsylvania Railroad, which in 1968 merged with the New York Central to form Penn Central. In 1974 it was sold to Crescent, which repowered and rebuilt it . . . Find more in Paul Strubeck’s Diesel Railroad Tugs Vol 1.
The river is quite busy; here Creole Sun works on a fleeting job.
Richard‘s pushing a set of tank barges. You might imagine I’m toying with a Mississippi River cruise this year.
American Pillar is a good example of a line haul boat: 195′ x 54′ and working with 10500 hp.
Fort Defiance Park in Cairo IL is a good place to see the Ohio and the Mississippi River refuse to mix for a while. Note the difference in water color.
I never mentioned that my car was broken into in East St Louis in summer 2021; Malcolm W Martin Park right across the way is the place. I left a review on tripadvisor in September 2021 here if you scroll through.
Leaving St Louis in 2013 we made a stop in Kampville to catch the ferry across the Illinois River.
Then it was a lot of dry until we got to the Monongahela River at Belle Vernon PA, and the port of registry on these boats tell you where the nearest port (to the north) is.
We’ll leave it there. If you want to peruse the archives for January 2013, click here . . . they are in reverse chronological order. There were obviously many many photos.
All photos, WVD.
These photos I took on a road trip 10 years ago. Revisiting some photos from this trip underscores how little I know about the inland waterways. Let’s start in Pittsburgh with Consol Energy’s Gabriel.
Farther west at Pike Island locks, Brenda Rose pushes some large components up the Ohio.
Downstream across from the stadiums in Cincinnati, Shirley B waits at the dock.
McGinnis’ Canadian heads upstream.
And still in Cincinnati, TPG Mt Vernon Marine’s William Jeffrey Bayer moves coal downstream. I wonder how they identify themselves on the radio.
Belle of Louisville–in Louisville–is a piece of history, launched only a little over 50 years after Herman Melville stopped by the port.
Cutting north to follow the eastern side of Lake Michigan, we came upon Captain George, looking immaculate for a 1929 built tug, here alongside Silversides.
This classic fish tug had no markings anywhere.
Nibroc, here in Muskegon, dates from 1938.
And finally, Paul H. Townsend, has since been towed to Port Colborne to be scrapped. I hope to see her remnants, macabre as that may sound, when I pass through there in early August.
All photos taken in late spring 2008 by Will Van Dorp, who’s currently doing a trip taking in coastlines and waterways not explored before.
or Go North . . . or up and then down bound.It’s all better than going south ….
Anyhow, in the spirit of the first of series from earlier this past months’ peregrinations, I’ll start with the map. The red pushpins are overnights and the yellows are shorter stops. An unexpected jaunt will be from Ogdensburg to Quebec City without stopping at Trois Rivieres or Montreal, where we stop after Quebec City.
Locks there’ll be plenty–37 total I believe–because the alternative is shown below. You can descend the Lachine Rapids, but in a different type of boat. Lachine . . . that’s French for what it looks like in English . . . China, as in … the folks like Cartier thought that if only they could get past the rapids, they’d be in China.
Here’s another way to look at the St Lawrence watershed, care of an USACE diagram.
Here’s to hoping you read this and to my having wifi.
By the way, I was shocked when I learned the namesake of the St Lawrence, patron saint of the BBQ. Sizzlicious!!
. . .it turns out Horace Greeley might not be the author, and John B. L. Soule, who may have been, had some harsh ideas about people.
I use it as explanation for something new I’m doing. Today I head over toward the pushpin to the right . . . Narragansett Bay, where I board a small passenger ship that has hired me as onboard lecturer. By July 12, we expect to be in Chicago via the route indicated. I am thrilled! The red dots are overnight stops, and the greenish ones are daytime stops for such tasks as lowering and raising the wheelhouse.
Here was Grande Mariner along the west side of Manhattan back in May 2016,
and here are two shots of her sister vessel farther upstate taken in 2013 and 2014.
The challenge I’m giving myself is to post each day of the westward journey, using photos from that day. Note that these ships with telescoping wheelhouse are truly Eriemax, designed to carry 100 souls along inland waterways on weeks-long voyages. My job is to present lectures every other day on topics ranging from wars along these waterways to 19th century canal fever to the storied and obscure cast of characters who lived along the waterways (e.g.., Seeger, Fulton, Rockefeller, Freed, Stanton, Tecumseh, Brock, Hanks) . . . to –of course–the variety of shipping working there.
In a way, it’s a 21st century version of the D & C route for which there’s the poster below.
If you don’t hear from me for a few days, just know I’m hoping to be somewhere along that route.
tugster: a waterblog 
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