Bonding on the rivers and Green Turtle Bay Fun

Bonding and Green Turtle Bay Fun

From reading looper blogs, we suspected that magic bonds connect travelers on the rivers.  Perhaps these bonds form because this section requires some careful planning of stops, plus coordination and communication with locks and tows and days of travel in tight groups.  The chatter between boats also flows at a higher level than we have experience on other sections of this trip. The results are bonds forged similar to our previous experience with deep desert travel adventures. We all survived the long days due to our joint efforts and now feel connected… luckily our group also shared a depth of nautical and engineering/technical experience which has only reinforced these bonds. While we are glad our days of traveling together on the big rivers are behind us, we nevertheless are sad to see the convoy boats go separate directions. Several members of our group are taking a break from travel, others are charging on, and some like us will just poke along taking side trips up the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers. To celebrate our fun on the rivers and spin the bonds just a little deeper, the ladies scheduled a day trip to Paducah – the courtesy van at Green Turtle Bay is available to each boat for two hours but with five of us from separate boats we had 10 hours to fill our shopping quotes.  This gave us time to see the shops that were open, tour the levee murals, catch the American Queen docked on the river in Paducah where we had spent the night, and even grab a bite of lunch.  Monique piloted the van, Deb was the ace navigator and the gals managed to spend the day on dry land without any disasters, malfunctions, or flat tires. The only sour note was our timing – we did fail to notice that many of the attractive shops in Paducah are not open on Mondays! Fortunately the historic Kirchoff’s Bakery was open so we could bring treats to the men. Our group also booked a dinner at the famous Patti’s Restaurant (which included the men) for her 2 inch pork chops and meringue pies. At least we are all well fed for the next adventure.