Big update since I never write.
Ok! So Nicole has chided me offline for being such a non-poster and so I'm here. For those that care, sorry I don't post so much. I just find most of what I do not that interesting for other people.
So last weekend was a trip to Cloverport, KY for me. Nicole and I took off fairly early and 9.5 hours later pull up at the house. It's a nice big old house, but it's old and we could tell when we went inside that Lisa and her husband Tommy have been doing some repairs in there. One big clue was the ladder in the living room, and ceiling tiles removed to show water pipes! Lol... well, we weren't going to be hosting guests, so that was no big deal. We spent some time cleaning up the place since no one lives there and the spiders tend to move in when people move out. We also got three of the four air conditioners going which was a total blessing. It was so hot up there. I don't know how we would have handled it without the air those things provided.
Cloverport is SMALL. I'm talking, very very small. It's off the main highway and so the festival that we attended is meant to be a big draw to attract people to the area to see the town. The good parts of it are that it's *RIGHT* on the Ohio river, which is beautiful and big, and it's fairly picturesque. Still, it's scary to think that a place exists that makes Franklin look like it's an amazing wonderful place with lots to do.
After a very restful sleep Friday night, Saturday started with a siren. Yes, as in a police siren. Which was followed by more sirens. Sirens that were very close. Sirens which were, in fact, right outside our front door. Now, I'm not exactly known as a morning person, so this tended to be slightly confusing for me. I managed to stagger out to the front door to peek out and saw.... practically the whole town and all of the police because of the parade! Ah! I had forgotten about that, and I was so tired that I slept until it started at 10:30. Ok, well, at least I could calm down about getting arrested. e.e
The festival is pretty small, and we saw most of it before retiring to bed Friday night, so Saturday I took a trip up to Indiana and to the dam and locks a few miles downstream. We were really lucky to arrive at the locks when a barge was about a mile up river. We climbed the observation deck and had a great view into the both the main and auxilary locks. The barge took about 10 minutes to get up close enough to us to start into the locks. For whatever reason, they decided the auxilary lock which was closer to us, so we were practically standing right over the barge when it came through. Awesome! Those suckers are huge. For those that don't know how it works, here it is in a nutshell:
Because of the dam, the water level is higher upriver than it is below the dam. Rather than have a chute of rapids that the the boats on the river try to navigate both ways, locks are used. The lock is like a section of river that has large doors on two sides. When a boat goes into it, water is either pumped into it (to raise the level of water for a boat going upstream, or released so that the water level drops to the level of the lower part of the river for one going downstream. It's an amazing system, and it's pretty interesting to watch.
Okay, so we take off from there and head a few miles more up the river on the Indiana side. I finally found the section of river that was exactly opposite Cloverport on the Indiana side. The Ohio river is a mile across, so you can see the whole town from the other side. We stayed there for a few minutes checking out the town and playing with a few dogs that wanted to play fetch, lol. Drove back to Tell City, IN to get a couple of things from stores and headed back to Cloverport. At this time it was getting pretty late, so we didn't have very long to wait until the fireworks started. We originally set up across the street from our house, but got pushed back across the road by someone that I'm assuming was local VFD. No worries, that was only a few feet.
We were totally impressed. WHAT a show! More than once I had to turn away and wipe my eyes from the tears in them. No not tears of joy, tears because it was so much light I couldn't take it, jeez! I wish that all the shows I ever see are that good in the future amazing. If you are a friend of mine and want to see it, let me know and i'll upload a nice little movie that Nicole took on her camera of a minute or so of it.
Sunday was get up, eat, and get ready to go day. After deciding what fresh foods we didn't eat that we had to reluctantly throw away before we took off, we did get to enjoy a smoothie that we made. Yumm! I'd never made one before, but now that I've got the machine, I'm SO going to make more of them. 9.5 hours back and we arrived. That's pretty much it!
Since then, it's just been work as usual. Made a killer sliver deck that was undefeated for Arena last monday, Nicole got her tattoo which stressed me out, and I won the magic tournament tonight, so things could be much worse. On the bright side, Nicole is still alive so I don't have to worry about that any more, and I've regained much of my sense of humor over yesterday's brooding.
So last weekend was a trip to Cloverport, KY for me. Nicole and I took off fairly early and 9.5 hours later pull up at the house. It's a nice big old house, but it's old and we could tell when we went inside that Lisa and her husband Tommy have been doing some repairs in there. One big clue was the ladder in the living room, and ceiling tiles removed to show water pipes! Lol... well, we weren't going to be hosting guests, so that was no big deal. We spent some time cleaning up the place since no one lives there and the spiders tend to move in when people move out. We also got three of the four air conditioners going which was a total blessing. It was so hot up there. I don't know how we would have handled it without the air those things provided.
Cloverport is SMALL. I'm talking, very very small. It's off the main highway and so the festival that we attended is meant to be a big draw to attract people to the area to see the town. The good parts of it are that it's *RIGHT* on the Ohio river, which is beautiful and big, and it's fairly picturesque. Still, it's scary to think that a place exists that makes Franklin look like it's an amazing wonderful place with lots to do.
After a very restful sleep Friday night, Saturday started with a siren. Yes, as in a police siren. Which was followed by more sirens. Sirens that were very close. Sirens which were, in fact, right outside our front door. Now, I'm not exactly known as a morning person, so this tended to be slightly confusing for me. I managed to stagger out to the front door to peek out and saw.... practically the whole town and all of the police because of the parade! Ah! I had forgotten about that, and I was so tired that I slept until it started at 10:30. Ok, well, at least I could calm down about getting arrested. e.e
The festival is pretty small, and we saw most of it before retiring to bed Friday night, so Saturday I took a trip up to Indiana and to the dam and locks a few miles downstream. We were really lucky to arrive at the locks when a barge was about a mile up river. We climbed the observation deck and had a great view into the both the main and auxilary locks. The barge took about 10 minutes to get up close enough to us to start into the locks. For whatever reason, they decided the auxilary lock which was closer to us, so we were practically standing right over the barge when it came through. Awesome! Those suckers are huge. For those that don't know how it works, here it is in a nutshell:
Because of the dam, the water level is higher upriver than it is below the dam. Rather than have a chute of rapids that the the boats on the river try to navigate both ways, locks are used. The lock is like a section of river that has large doors on two sides. When a boat goes into it, water is either pumped into it (to raise the level of water for a boat going upstream, or released so that the water level drops to the level of the lower part of the river for one going downstream. It's an amazing system, and it's pretty interesting to watch.
Okay, so we take off from there and head a few miles more up the river on the Indiana side. I finally found the section of river that was exactly opposite Cloverport on the Indiana side. The Ohio river is a mile across, so you can see the whole town from the other side. We stayed there for a few minutes checking out the town and playing with a few dogs that wanted to play fetch, lol. Drove back to Tell City, IN to get a couple of things from stores and headed back to Cloverport. At this time it was getting pretty late, so we didn't have very long to wait until the fireworks started. We originally set up across the street from our house, but got pushed back across the road by someone that I'm assuming was local VFD. No worries, that was only a few feet.
We were totally impressed. WHAT a show! More than once I had to turn away and wipe my eyes from the tears in them. No not tears of joy, tears because it was so much light I couldn't take it, jeez! I wish that all the shows I ever see are that good in the future amazing. If you are a friend of mine and want to see it, let me know and i'll upload a nice little movie that Nicole took on her camera of a minute or so of it.
Sunday was get up, eat, and get ready to go day. After deciding what fresh foods we didn't eat that we had to reluctantly throw away before we took off, we did get to enjoy a smoothie that we made. Yumm! I'd never made one before, but now that I've got the machine, I'm SO going to make more of them. 9.5 hours back and we arrived. That's pretty much it!
Since then, it's just been work as usual. Made a killer sliver deck that was undefeated for Arena last monday, Nicole got her tattoo which stressed me out, and I won the magic tournament tonight, so things could be much worse. On the bright side, Nicole is still alive so I don't have to worry about that any more, and I've regained much of my sense of humor over yesterday's brooding.