Louisville's a river town. Doesn't amount to a hill of beans these days but the city owes it's existence to the Ohio River. Back when riding the river was the best way to travel, the only obstacle to that was the Falls of the Ohio here. Louisville grew out catering to the river traffic dealing with the falls.
Initially that meant unloading a vessel on one side of the falls and portaging the goods to another vessel waiting on the other side. Later they built a canal to bypass the falls before eventually building a set of locks on the river. The modern edition of those, the McAlpine Locks and Dam, pretty well covers the falls but there's a Falls of the Ohio State Park on the Indiana side that you can still visit.
We went there Sunday, aiming to wander the fossil beds but they were a bit moist. Submerged, actually. We weren't the only ones having issues with the river though, on the other side of the river the McAlpine Locks were dealing with some runaway barges.
Apparently Rosie the Riveter worked in a factory in Clarksville, Indiana. Still not sure why the buildings are talking though. Or why it says Clarksville but is set up so Louisville is the the backdrop.
Tried to get down by the river like I normally do but the Ohio had other ideas. It was hard to tell where the river ended and the debris field began but you could definitely tell the water level was rising.
There's nothing like a river rising up to show you just how trashy humans are. Seemed like no matter which way you turned it was just driftwood and garbage. It was much the same with the Kentucky River where I grew up, except with more household appliances. As kids we looked forward to floods, we'd grab our rifles and head down to the riverbank to hunt 'plastic ducks.' Pretty sure they'd get a bit excited if I tried that here.
Anybody thirsty? It's a bit difficult to tell but the foreground of the shot above is water. Guess where Louisville's drinking water comes from? It's almost enough to make you forget there's 1,400 tons of methanol in one of the barges that's half sunk and stuck on the dam.
Speaking of forgetting, pretty sure fossils got mentioned somewhere. There was still a tiny bit of the fossil beds that were accessible so our quest for fossils ended up not being entirely in vain. Got distracted by people and didn't take any photos of them though.
You did have to watch your step a bit. Been here many times but I've never seen the river up this high. Must have had some lucky timing in the past, seems summer and fall are the best time to visit if you want to see something other than muddy water and river trash.
Only brought my 50mm prime lens with me, so naturally I wanted my wide angle as soon as I got there. To my surprise, my phone has a surprisingly passable wide angle lens, which is what the two photos above were taken with.
There's only so much to see and do when most of the park is underwater but it was still nice just to get out and enjoy the weather.
Anyone else ever been out enjoying a nice bit of nature kayaking down a river and look up to find old tires and diapers hanging from the tree limbs above you?
