Wednesday 4-5 Windy Day

Visiting Paducah Kentucky

We woke up this morning to overcast skies. About an hour later it started to rain so we stayed put until the front went through.

While we were waiting I used my new pizza stone to bake biscuits for breakfast. The bottoms of the biscuits were a little overdone. The oven in the Minnie has always been hard to predict but over the years I found what usually works best is to set the temperature 25 degrees lower and cook at the shortest time, not sure what went wrong this morning. When lunchtime came around I used the pizza stone again, this time I baked muffins. I made a mistake and had the pizza stone directly above the burner on the metal plate and put the muffin pan on the stone, guess what happened? I burned the muffins. I should have put the pizza stone on the oven rack and the muffin pan on it. I had enough muffin mix to bake a few more muffins so I baked them at a lower temperature and on the rack instead of directly on the stone. They came out better.

After lunch the rain was gone and the roads were drying out so we decided to go back to Paducah. We spent an hour or so walking around downtown Paducah. As we walked around we looked at their gorgeous murals. The artist was Robert Dafford, he worked with four other artists to tell the history of Paducah through murals. Each mural had a plaque that told the story behind it. These murals are located on the flood wall along the Ohio River. After looking at the wall of murals we walked around the downtown. There were art museums, art galleries, cafes and The National Quilt Museum. We came across a gentleman carving on a stick, we stopped and talked to him. He was carving a snake on a walking stick. He was a very interesting man. After talking to him we walked through The Art Guild of Paducah gallery and shop where he displays his works. Then we walked down the street and walked through another art gallery. The Paducah area has a lot of talented artist. We really wanted to tour The National Quilt Museum but they would not allow you to take pictures, just couldn’t see paying the price of admission and not be able to take pictures. 

Paducah Portraits of our Past

Telephone Operators                                                   Horse Drinking Fountain in 1907

Lewis and Clark exhibit

Downtown Paducah

The next thing we did was drive around and looked at a couple of dams. As we were driving to the first dam we crossed The Tennessee River which feeds into the Ohio River. In order to get to the first dam we crossed over a cool metal bridge with metal grates . Larry doesn’t like driving the Minnie on these type of bridges, they are very narrow and the metal grates make them difficult to drive on. When we got to the dam we were on the other side of the river so we couldn’t see the locks and dam. The next dam we wanted to see was the Kentucky Dam. It had a visitor center so we went inside. The gentleman manning the information desk was very helpful and gave us a lot of information. Larry talked with him for a long time. We learned that the dams along the Ohio River all have locks. The Corps of Engineers control the locks but the Tennessee Valley Authority controls the power that is generated. There was a control room at the visitor center where they monitor the power output. Larry asked if we could go to where the lock was. He said it’s been closed to the public since 9/11. We were disappointed but we enjoyed learning about the dam system. 

Crossing over the Ohio River                                                                    Kentucky Dam        

                     

A tugboat getting beaten up by the waves

On the way back we stopped and had dinner at Hardee's. When we got back to the casino I fed Flo her dinner and took her for walk. Afterwards I went to the casino for a couple of hours.
Harrah’s Casino was a great place to gamble, loved that it is a non-smoking casino. They do have designated areas outside where you can smoke.  It’s not a huge casino but I had fun giving them a little money. The parking lot is very quiet so I had no problem sleeping. The casino is right on the Ohio River. Occasionally you can see tugboats pushing barges on the river.  

Entrance to Harrah’s Casino

We had a super day even though it was windy all day.