Grand Rivers, KY

We’re nearing the end of our five-night stay at Green Turtle Bay Resort & Marina, our longest visit anywhere in 30+ years of boating. We’ve done laundry twice and are eager to set sail again tomorrow. Our original plan was for a 3-4 night stay, and we wanted to have some letters and packages forwarded here. Since we’re in vacation mode, neither one of us remembered that Monday was a federal holiday, so we ended up staying longer to wait for our deliveries. Everything arrived today, and we are gassed up and ready to head out tomorrow. 

We spent most of our time relaxing and enjoying the delightful town of Grand Rivers, KY (pop. 345), which is about a mile from the marina, and we’ve visited on foot, bicycle, golf cart and car. The centerpiece of Grand Rivers is Patti’s 1880s Settlement, a recreated log cabin community and tourist destination, and home to one of the most popular restaurants in Western Kentucky. Patti’s house specialty is their 2-inch thick pork chop, which was enormous and delicious and we have another full meal of leftovers in the boat fridge. This morning we borrowed  one of the marina’s courtesy vans to go grocery shopping, then went to the gym and indoor pool. We had some afternoon sun left and beautiful weather, so we decided to head back into town to play mini-golf. We mentioned our plans to the friendly live-aboard in the next slip and he handed us the keys to his golf cart, so we rode in style. 

We did get out the folding bikes on our second day and rode through town and across the Barkley Canal into the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area. The Kentucky hills kicked our butts and we pooped out after 11 miles. Yesterday we gave Dragonfly a good scrubbing to remove the dead bugs and mud collected on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. 

There are a couple of resident great blue herons on the docks, and deer everywhere here.

Our next leg will be on Kentucky Lake, created in 1944 when the Tennessee Valley Authority dammed the Tennessee River for flood control and electrical power generation. Kentucky Lake is the largest artificial lake in the Eastern U.S. and is 184 miles long, covers more than 160,000 acres and has 2,300 miles of shoreline. We have a couple of little coves picked out to drop anchor in as we continue our journey tomorrow.