Kentucky: Grand Rivers (Day 7)

Day: 100
No boat travel

We have not seen much sun to speak of in Grand Rivers, Kentucky and today was no exception to that rule.  Besides being overcast all day, it was in the 60s with a cold breeze.  It did not rain, so that at least was a blessing.

Today's agenda amounted to bicycle riding into town to explore plus restock some groceries.  As I mentioned in yesterday's block, it is quite hilly here, and right off the bat we had a serious hill to climb to get up and away from the marina.  My bike was in the wrong gear and refused to budge, so I had to stop and then change the gear to the lowest gear to help get up the hill. It was bad enough with momentum, but after stopping it was even more of a challenge, but I made it to the top.

Just before entering town a sweet shop sits near the street corner.  Before the cook retired she put on multi-course German meals with all the trimmings and desserts.  Apparently she was quite popular.  She is retired from that business now and only bakes to order, i.e. order a pie early in day and pick up later in the day sort of thing.  We were not in the market for a pie today, but I asked if she could make me some soft, chewy peanut butter cookies.  We placed and paid for our order and then continued on our site seeing tour of town.

As our first stop on our tour of town we chose to explore Patti's 1880's Settlement - almost like a town within a town providing two restaurants and a cafe, a mini-golf course, some trinket and souvenir shops, clothing stores, and our favorite - the ice cream parlor.

Patti's 1880's Settlement

Walking my bike through the settlement

We saw a sign that prohibited bike riding, so we walked our bikes all through the settlement.  At one point Clark drew my attention to a store  "Little Lamb" selling baby and children's clothing.  I went in to see if they had any goodies for my future grandchild.  The clothing appeared to be of good quality, but I saw nothing uniquely related to the settlement or even the general vicinity of the store, and so I came away empty handed.

As we strolled around we saw some old farm equipment and home-made furniture on display.  We noticed a set of trees with major wind chimes hanging up in them.  We also saw the unique birdhouses shown in the picture below.  My favorite is the second from the right labeled Patti's Chapel complete with windows designed to look like stained-glass windows.

Unique Bird Houses

A few animals are on the property.  We saw numerous cats, a cage containing rabbits, and a few fowl like the one below name Tom-Tom.  As we watched, a rooster smaller than 1/4th the size of this turkey managed to chase the turkey to the opposite side of the pen by repeatedly attacking him with his claws.  No wonder Tom-Tom was skittish after that.

Shy Turkey named Tom-Tom
refused to pose nicely for the camera

Before leaving the premises, we stuck our noses into the ice cream shop to find out what they had besides the Vanilla flavor of the week.  We discovered two flavors of sherbet, vanilla, chocolate, mint and mystery ice cream.  The sales person had no idea what flavor the ice cream might be.  We told the clerk we would potentially be back later after eating lunch, and we set out to explore some more.

Ice Cream Parlor
Flavor of the Week - Vanilla

The only problem was that now I smelled all the goodies in the ice cream shoppe I decided I was pretty darn hungry.  My watch said "noon" so I figured I was justified in being hungry.  Clark's apparent plan was to return to the boat, have me make lunch, and then come back to town.  I nixed that idea and said let's look for something to eat in town instead of mucking about with the back and forth.  We used the street sign to help us decide where to go.

 

On the right side, ten items down in the list, we found "Lite Side Cafe & Bakery"  3/10 mile south, so we headed there.  Our fall back plan was the Village Market and Cafe right in town.  We found the restaurant at the top of a hill on the way out of town.  The inside of the restaurant smelled like cigarette smoke, so even though it was quite chilly, we opted to sit and eat outdoors.  I find the smell of old cigarette smoke to be most displeasing.

The homemade, fresh sourdough roll that my turkey and cranberry sandwich was served on was "to die for".  It was melt-in-your-mouth soft and sweet.  No wonder they make the TripAdvisor list of places to go!

After finishing our yummy lunch, we rode back into town to see what else we could find.  Clark knew of a lighthouse nearby, so that became our next destination.  We rode past the Badgett Playhouse where we have tickets to see their variety show.

Friday Night Performance
Variety!  Music, Memories, and More!

 After taking a few photos of the theater for the night, we crossed the road and traveled down Commerce Street to Kentucky Lake.

Lighthouse Landing Marina & Resort
on Kentucky Lake
(lighthouse is real)

Spying on Kentucky Lake through the leaves. Shhhh!

Fishing by the lighthouse -
fisherman and fisher bird (Heron) sit waiting for the catch of the day
by the lighthouse

A week ago, when we traveled down the Ohio River, we opted to avoid the Kentucky Lock when we traveled to Green Turtle Bay Marina to minimize travel delays  As we stood at then end of a long pier on Kentucky Lake, we could see the Kentucky Lock and a barge waiting for a trip through.

Barge sitting with its load outside Kentucky Lock

Closer view of Kentucky Lock

 Although Lighthouse Landing referred to itself as a "resort", they could not hold a candle to Green Turtle Bay.  Our last photo of Lighthouse Landing included a picutre of the cliffs below (the white cliffs of Grand Rivers?).  We could not decide what rock this wall is made from, but it did look to be eroding over time.  The picture does not show it well, but there are houses up there on top of the cliffs.

As we rode towards the marina exit a younger man walked by with his wife and said, "Hey!  I know you.  We talked last night."  It turned out to be the real estate agents that I talked to last night at the Looper BBQ at length.  We had another long chat about sailboats versus trawlers / power boats. They are not currently on the loop but want to be next year or some time in the near future.

Next stop, groceries.  Many folks have told us what a "nice little grocery" they have here in town.  In my opinion it provides most essentials, but quality seems to be a little lacking.  My fridge is basically bare when it comes to vegetables.  Shopping at the Village Market did not help that situation.  The cherry tomatoes had started to "prune up".  One fruit pie I saw clearly had mold on top.  I bought most of what I needed but looked at expiration dates carefully before selecting an item off the shelf.

After food shopping, I packed our backpacks full of our purchases for the trip back to the boat.  Before heading out of town, however, we decided to head to the ice cream shop for the ice cream we passed on earlier in the day, so back to Patti's Settlement we went!  I decided I had to taste the mystery flavor to see if I could guess it.  Sadly the mystery flavor turned out to be coffee ice cream and I hate coffee ice cream.  I ordered a vanilla in a waffle cone - hey - flavor of the week choice, and it turned out to be a good one for me.  Clark ordered both vanilla and rainbow sherbet in a waffle cone.  The sales person asked us how we could stand eating ice cream on such a cold day, and we told him any day is a good day for ice cream.

Our backpacks full, our bellies full, we headed out of Patti's for the ride back to the boat.  But first, we had to stop to pick up my peanut butter cookies I ordered.  Clark had paid upon ordering, so all I had to do was retrieve the cookies.  She made a baker's dozen but the last cookie broke.  She had that one on a plate for taste testing for me to try with the offer that if I did not like the cookies she would give me my money back.  I tasted, I liked, I took!  I had just enough room in my backpack for my box full of homemade cookies, so I slid them in and we took off for the boat.

There is one good thing I can say about riding a bike on hills - downhill is great!  The steep hill we had to climb to go into town from the marina was now a sweet downhill ride back to the boat.  Since my accident last year I have been very cautious on speed with my bike, but today I could not resist keeping my hands off the brakes and just "going for it".  It felt great and the momentum was good to get me most of the way up the final hill into the marina!

When we got back to the boat, I unpacked the backpacks and sat down to work on my blog.  Clark went out to check on the golf cart rental and look for his missing package to see if it had arrived yet.  He finally came back a very long while later with no package in hand but with a golf cart ready for our trip into town "in style" later.

The time got away from me and all of a sudden I had to throw food together for supper in a hurry to make it to meet our friends on Jammin Jane for our trip to town for the show.  The only down side of our trip to the show was that just before we planned to leave it started to rain, which made the seats all wet for us to sit on.  On the other hand, it gave us a great, full-sky rainbow to appreciate.

Full-sky rainbow over the marina

We piled into the golf cart and started on our way.  It did not take long for us to start making jokes about the golf cart speed into town.  Clark assured us that we could have biked faster even though he had the pedal all the way to the floor.  Ben helped the golf cart up a hill by saying, "I think I can. I think I can."

The show was excellent.  Ben and Jane got popcorn and drinks.  Although we bought our tickets separately, fate was kind and we were able to sit next to each other during the show.  As we looked around the theater, we saw other loopers who had decided to take advantage of the entertainment.  We saw Palmetto Paradise, No Zip Code, Ariel, and Time Out to name a few.  

The Variety show was just that "variety".  The music they represented covered everything from Big Band to Gospel to Country to Disco to just about anything else imaginable.  Besides the regular cast of the show, they called Natasha Neely Henry up on stage and extended the show by a few minutes to have her and her husband join in the singing.  The show also included an attempt to stump Terry Mike Jeffrey who is an Elvis expert.  The audience came close but ultimately failed as he was able to play the tune requested.

When the show ended, and we exited to get our golf cart, we realized that as far as we could tell, all the other loopers who attended the show had walked!  With the chill in the air I believe that walking would have been considerably warmer than our open-air ride.  Still, I am glad we used the golf cart.  It was definitely fun to ride in it.  Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed the evening.  It was well worth the price of admission plus the expense of staying at the marina an extra night just to see the show.

Tomorrow morning we pull out of this marina to continue our journey south.  We've stayed here for more than a week and greatly enjoyed the time spent with fellow loopers, but it is time to move on.  Our next stop is an anchorage so a blog entry may or  may not happen depending on cell service.