We saw Paducah yesterday.
It’s a very nicely done river town for the old part of downtown. Lots of antique stores and low key tourist things. The real downtown and residential areas are like any small city or big town. We didn’t go to the quilt museum, because we have seen that previously.

Today (Friday) was another cloudy, rainy day, but we went out for a drive (good old Enterprise Rentacar) to see the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area. It’s a well developed, well cared for nature playground of woods and lakes. The fall colors were in their prime, but no sun so no pictures. We enjoyed it anyhow, but it would have been spectacular if the weather would have cooperated. It’s run by ther Dept of Agriculture, not the National Park Service because it’s not a national park. They still have park rangers, they just work for a different department, like our son, Mike, did this year at Grand Coulee Dam’s Lake Roosevelt Recreation Area.


Land Between the Lakes has the largest buffalo (bison) herd in the world, according to their visitor center, and there were five or so eating the lush grass near the road we were on. They are absolutely huge…..like the size of a VW bus. We also saw some of their elk herd.

Near the middle of the recreation area. you can drive out of the woods on highways to little towns like Cadiz, KY, where we went for lunch. It’s pronounced “K-dis” unlike the Cadiz, OH near where Mom grew up, which is “Ka-deese” to the locals. There’s a well known road stop famous for their smoked bacon and hams, and we got a few for tasting. They’ll be in some of our breakfasts and lunches on the water in the next few days.


Cadiz also has “Porky’s B BQ” which is a roadside trailer stand and a big smoker grill mounted on a trailer. They only have two real BBQ items, a pulled pork sandwich, which is another huge pile of meat with the spicy hot vinegar sauce steeped into the meat, and huge 2 inch thick pork chops. The pork chops are boneless butterfly chops that are 2 in. thick when they’re put in to the hickory smoker. They’re served 2 on a plate or one in a hamburger bun, again drenched in the spicy vinegar BBQ sauce. Kathy had the pork plate and I had the pork chop sandwich. The picture doesn’t even do it justice……..but I ate it all.

Tomorrow (Sat.) morning, we’ll leave for the trip down Kentucky Lake towards the Ten-Tom canal. There may not be good phone service so we may be off-line for a while.