7/20/17 Thursday - Day 5

Holiday Point Marina to Ripley Boat Club

73 miles, 2 mechanic visits, 1 lock

The day started as most, we slept pretty good with the fans going.  Cereal, coffee, and electrical problems to get the day moving.  Ronnie(the mechanic at Holiday Point) came out to the boat to look at our power issues. After checking voltage, disconnecting and reconnecting the inverter...the problem was a little push in circuit breaker on the inverter. WHAM, electric fixed!  So we are off.....or not 🤔 Starboard engine won't start.  Call Ronnie(and his "crew" back out). While the boys are working I decide to take the "1 mile" bike ride to the BP to pick up a few things.  1 mile was actually about 3 miles(one way)! 

Finally almost noon after replacing the solenoid (no luck...) It was determined that a reistor ballast was bad.  Got one from NAPA and after it was installed we are running again. Head over to fill up gas and water and pump out.  Before heading out I called the lock.....they are down to 1 chamber and it's at least a 2 hour wait!  We hung out, air on, and napped before finally pulling out around 2pm. So much for an early start😞

Once we got moving we made some time.  Stopped in Maysville Kentucky and that is a beautiful little town!  If it wasn't 100 degrees I would have loved to spend some more time there. Then 10 more miles to Ripley Boat Club, home for the night. Had a yummy dinner at the restaraunt of mushroom steak hoagie, fried pickles, corn, French fries, and wings.  Way too much food!

The Colossus on the Ohio.  Built in 1916 it is the largest riveted truss bridge in the US

Belle of Cincinatti docked in front of downtown Portsmouth

Several pics of another impressive flood wall mural.....this one in Maysville 

We got a kick out of this sign on a street corner in Maysville KY with a finger pointing toward Zanesville 

Maysville had an impressive array of historic buildings and homes with a very nice downtown.....last series of pics are just a sampling 

Ended the day with a wonderful sunset! 🌄

7/19/17 Wednesday - Day 4 - Gallipolis to Holiday Point MarinaTugs

70 miles and 1 Lock (Robert C Byrd Lock and Dam)
After a long, hot, exhausting but fun day yesterday both of us slept very well in the still and protected cove of Gallipolis Boat club.  Erik even slept in till 6:30am! 
We awoke and made bacon and farm fresh eggs (Thank You Aunt Faith for bringing us those yesterday, and Peg for sharing) while we awaited the dock guys arrival at 9am to pay for our slip and gas up for the days voyage.  We were quite unpleasantly surprised at their gas price of $4.52 per gallon!  Yowsers......so, we got what we knew we needed to make our 70 or so mile trip to Holiday Point Marina in Franklin Furnace where we called ahead to find out their gas price ($2.99 gal....MUCH better). 
We cruised at a pretty good pace of about 15-18 mph because we planned to stop at several towns/cities along the way.   As it turned out, we only made one stop in  Ashland Kentucky.  We accidentally passed by the municipal wall/docks in Huntington WV and by the time we realized there was not another on downriver we did not feel like backtracking.  So, into KY we went.  Ashland  was a nice small town, but not too much to see on a 90 degree day while also trying to keep Toby from overheating.   After a short walk through town we got back aboard and floated and swam to cool off for a bit.  As much as Toby dislikes water, he definitely appreciated a few buckets of water being dumped over him back on the aft deck!  He was now a happy pup!  
We motored on intending to stop and walk around Ironton, however, as hot as it was we decided to go straight to Holiday Point Marina where we would stay for the night so that we could get he AC running to keep Renee.....I mean Toby cool. 
We got our slip, walked the docks to boat look, made dinner, showered, and started writing this blog post.  Then......ut oh! We found out that apparently our vessels electrical system doesn't like the AC/hot water tank/microwave running simultaneously...imagine that.  A pause in the blog writing to investigate left us stumped and without shore power.  We are thinking that the AC breaker is possibly fried.  We will wait till morning and see if the service dept has a new one :-).  No AC for the night, but, it's cooled off nicely and we do have the inverter to run fans and the fridge.  Tonight we will go to sleep thanking the Lord for what we DO have and not worrying TOO much about what we do not. Not many pics today, but quite a beautiful sunset! 

Tugs on the river

Houses along the river

Spaceship at Holiday Point Marina entrance

Bed and Breakfast at Holiday Point

Sunset at Holiday Point

7/18/17 Tuesday - Day 3 -Pomeroy to Gallipolis

28 miles (including boating around with visiting family for about 8 miles) No locks.
We woke to a very foggy morning ..... No worries, it kept the temps down long enough to enjoy a nice relaxing morning at the free wall before heading out for a short travel day to Gallipolis at 9:30 am.
We had touched base with Erik's aunt Faith yesterday and made plans to meet at the Gallipolis public park and river wall.
We got to Gallipolis and walked around and enjoyed their beautiful riverfront park with some really nice monuments including an excellent vets memorial. 
We were blessed with a visit from Aunt Faith and Peg as well as cousins Gregory and Patience.   We took them on a short river cruise and to the delight of Patience and Gregory swam in the river for a bit.   It was a much appreciated cool down on what was quickly becoming a HOT day.  Unfortunately, Peg and Faith didn't have swimsuits with them so they had to watch us cool down :-)
We then motored back up river to Point Pleasant where we had a nice lunch at a Mexican restaurant and then walked around town seeing some of the sites.  Point Pleasant is a very nice town with lots to see.   We visited the Mothman Museum (ewwwww), the River Museum (very well done and nice!), And walked along the floodwall enjoying the mural paintings on it and the associated monuments.   It is a very impressive mural on the wall that is probably 1/2 mile long!   Our pics will not do it justice I am certain.  
After making our way back downriver to Gallipolis and dropping off our kin at their car, we made our way into Gallipolis Boat Club to dock for the night at about 6pm. Toby had been in the heat all day and was EXTREMELY appreciative when we plugged in and fired up the AC. 
We cooked and ate dinner and then walked about a mile into town to attend an AA meeting......as always it is fun for us to visit out of town meetings and make new friends. 
We ended our night with a stop through Piggly Wiggly for a package of Klondike bars......showered......bed.   good night

Leaving Pomery in the morning

Also leaving Pomeroy a neat shot of the bridge with it's image reflecting off the smooth morning water

Gallipolis River Front Park......really gorgeous

Hi Aunt Faith and Patience......sorry for the dark shot

Hi again Faith......you look better in the light!  Gregory must be shining on you

Aunt Peg and Renee

Erik and Patience

Gregory jumping off the top of the boat

No caption needed.....read the sign dummy

Tu-Endie-Wei (the point between two waters in the Wyandotte language) Park in Point Pleasant had a cool very old log home/mansion

A bad panoramic shot of the very impressive mural on the flood wall

A slightly better shot of an example of a section of mural

Gregory and a statue!

There really is a Mothman!

River museum

A shot from inside the museum of one of many models

The park at the point from land

Welcome to Gallipolis 

7/17/17 Monday - Day 2 - Marietta Boat Club to Pomeroy

78 miles and 2 locks today in our journey.
Even after a late, late night we arose with the sun at 6am.  We left Marietta Boat Club and headed out onto the Mighty Ohio leaving our beloved Muddy Muskingum behind in our wake. 
A pretty uneventful but relaxing day (except for Renee having to clean the boat......we'll get back to that).  This section of the Ohio has long stretches of scenic rural landscape.  Lots of trees, hills, and cliffs.  The only large town we passed was Parkersburg.   Several other little one breath towns. 
Shortly before our second lock of the day (Racine Lock and Dam) we decided that Toby probably needed to stop for a potty break as we had been underway for almost 7hrs.  Well......I suppose we should have had that thought 10 mins earlier because when we came down from the flybridge we had quite a mess to clean up :-(   Apparently some combination of the stress and motion had Tobys tummy upset which had some very adverse results to his bowels.   We'll spare everyone the pics on that event!
We arrived in Pomeroy and are docked at the town free wall (also has free electric.....so we'll be sleeping in the AC tonight!).    After dinner on the grill (steak and salmon.....yum) we walked up into the quaint town to get Toby some Pepto, a milkshake for us, and wash towels and rags at the laundry mat.   Hoping we won't need those again tomm for Toby!  Another blessed day. 

Saying goodbye to The Muskingum

And hello to The Ohio

Passing by Parkersburg

Pomeroy.....our resting place for the evening.  

A mural on a building in Pomeroy

Our home for the evening......nice view of a beautiful suspension bridge in the background

7/16/17 Sunday - Day 1 - Home to Marietta Boat club

60 miles and 7 locks down the muddy Muskingum today.  Left our home at 9:30am today to start our looping adventure!  The water was running fast and high.  It was quite an adventure traversing some of the locks.  Stockport Lock was VERY interesting to say the least.  The water was crazy fast and creating 3 ft waves as we exited the downside.  We had to bring the boat up to half throttle as we exited the doors just to get through it.  On down river at Luke Chute we had our next challenge.  Because of the high water there was a boatload (pun intended) of debris at the down side of the spillway. There were piles of logs, and misc stuff......we muscled through slowly with no damage done :-)
We arrived at Marrietta Boat Club and we're greeted with a smile by Howard.  He helped us to fuel up, pump out, and into our slip for the night.   When we tried to get the shore power hooked up we experienced another kind of challenge.  We could not hook up without tripping the Marina's new GFCI breakers......hmmmm.  We paused to cook and eat and then dove into trying to figure out what our electrical issue was.   After a couple of hours of taking apart electrical panels and such we decided it was time to call in a pro.  We called Roger, a boat mechanic we know in Marietta.  He suggested we talk to George , an electrician who also had boats there at the club.  He didn't have George's # but fortunately 'Peeps', another club member down at the docks, did have it.  In comes George who agrees to come down even though it is almost 10pm .  We spent about 2.5 more hours with George before finally finding the issue and making the fix.   It turned out to be an issue with the new inverter we had installed a couple weeks ago.  There was a 'ground loop' that needed disconnected for marine application.   The best part about our new marine electrician friend was that he was full of good and funny stories :-) AND.....for after hours service it only cost us a cup of coffee and $0.00!  More proof positive that boaters are great people :-). 
It was a long and tiring day that ended with a bedtime after 1am.....we're to old for that!  

Leaving home for grand adventures!

Stockport Dam and Mill

Stockport coming out of the lock into the rapids

Debris coming out of Luke Chute

Docked at Marietta Boat Club