What a nice day. It was cloudy and cold, but the scenery is outstanding. The Ohio River is a wide river with lots of Barge Traffic. Traveling this time of the year, no one else is on the water. Who goes boating in weather like this? Duh! Us! Anyway the combination of this time of year and the holiday – has even reduced the barge traffic, this is good for us. Today I finally got to travel on the same river – starting at the same point – as the Lewis and Clark expedition. They started out on August 31, 1803 in a 55’ keel boat with an 8’ beam. It took them until September 11th to get to the where we are. We are now anchored off an Island (again on the West Virginia side of the River) not too far from Wheeling. I believe the town on shore is called Sistersville. This stretch of the river is called the Long Reach. It was actually named that by George Washington. Lewis and Clark camped in this area (in fact not too far from were we are now). They said many squirrels swam in the river and Lewis’s dog (Seaman) would catch them. They fried them up and ate them. I didn’t know squirrels swam. Did you? It is beautiful country. Mountains, rolling hills – all dotted with small towns and villages. We passed a town called Moundsville today. In was the site of an Indian Mound Burial Ground that was 65 feet high and was surrounded by a 60 foot wide ditch. (I am using the past tense, because I don’t know if it still exists.) It was about 300 feet off the river, but we could not differentiate it from the rest of the topography.
Our Christmas Eve dinner was terrific. Patrick made us Sloppy Joes. Actually he called them Lumburgers. Delicious! Because it is Christmas tomorrow the decision is to sleep in till 8:AM (Pretty normal time for the guys) but anchor by about 3:00PM so we can enjoy our Christmas feast. We can’t trust our turkey to the oven (it has a thermostat problem and cooks at 600 degrees no matter where the dial is) so Lionel is going to put it on the b-b-q grill.
Tonight tensions are up. We are having a problem with the fuel tanks, water tanks and the boiler is not working. Lionel and Bob have been working all night trying to get it up, to no avail. We are using the space heaters for heat, but the load may be too much for the generator. This poor old gal is huffing, puffing and wheezing. I just hope she can hold her old parts together – at least till we get into some warmer weather, or better yet, till we get home.
Tomorrow we will see how it goes. Till Later….
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