Aquaholic: 6/19/18 - Tuesday - Paris Landing Ky to Mermaid Marina Tn

We met some nice folks at Paris Landing. One couple just bought their 34’ Sea Ray cruiser a couple of weeks ago and are headed up river bringing it home to the Pickwick Lock area. Another guy I was speaking with this morning was in process of coming down the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers and also on his way towards Pickwick and the TennTom. They are on a small nomad cruiser that has a 50 horse Honda on it (he says they get almost 8 miles to the gallon!). Their boat is trailerable and they’ve been doing The Loop in segments over multiple years as well. A couple of years ago they did the entirety of the Ohio and actually also have done our the Muskingum (our home river) from Zanesville to Marietta....it’s a small world 🌎
We decided to go with a slow and easy start to the day and spent some time at Paris Landing. We rode our bikes up to the Lodge where they had a breakfast buffet (mediocre at best) to fill our bellies for the day. On the way back to the boat we stopped in at the nature center/animal rescue and saw some pretty cool birds of prey and snakes. Paris Landing is a very nice state park.
Back on the water at about 11am we continued our slow cruise for several hours back into Tennessee. Along the way we saw a cool old abandoned railroad lift bridge accompanied by an abandoned grain elevator that was flooded out when Kentucky Lake was created in the 1940’s (hard to believe its still standing!).
Mid afternoon we decided that we wanted to try to make it to Mermaid Marina (one of the few that were open on Tuesday’s...and with the cheapest gas we’ve found). In order to accomplish this we decided to pick up the pace a bit and went up to a whopping 13mph @3K rpm. While I cruised from the flybridge (for a time in the buff while drying my swimsuit 😯) Renee took an hour nap on the bow in the zero gravity chair while enjoying the breeze and lap of water on the hull.
This is the section where Kentucky Lake changes to much more of a river than a lake. It still has many bays/outcroppings/inlet areas, but the basic feel now is that of a wide river. It also became VERY remote and beautiful through this area. We started seeming many cypress trees along the banks. About 10 or 12 miles from today’s destination we came into an area of many high cliffs and bluffs. At a sharp bend in the river the depth increased to almost 80’. We stopped here for a few moments and chatted with a nice older guy in a small aluminum fishing boat who was cat fishing. We saw him pull one up from the 75+ ft of water and it was the cleanest blue (he callled it a white) cat fish I’ve ever seen. Would be good eating I bet!
As we approached Mermaid Marina we started seeing many nice homes along the banks all of which looked to be no older than 10 yrs and of the same basic style. Looked like a very nice community. We got docked at Mermaid and since we hadn’t eaten since the breakfast buffet (it was now 7:30pm) we cooked up a few hot dogs on the grill and accompanied them with a couple of leftover grilled chicken 🍗 from last night. Quick boat showers (shower house was not close and we didn’t have door codes) and our evening coffee finished out the evening and we made it an early bed time.
Plans are to cruise tomm another 75 miles or so and make it to Aqua Yacht Harbor where we should have an Amazon package awaiting us (a new solenoid for our air horn).