2016 a year on the boat

January 2016 - December 2017  •  713 days

2016 didn't go as planned, the year of El Nino brought us some wicked weather in south Florida. We could not seem to catch a break on getting over to the Bahamas (plus the depth finder stopped working) so we decided to head north on the west coat and go to Kentucky Lake. The previous year of "the loop" we traveled through Kentucky Lake in fall and not much was happening then, so we are headed back. When we almost get there, Eric says,"I can't spend all summer there, pick a river". So our options were the upper Mississippi, the upper Tennessee, the Cumberland or the Ohio. I picked the Ohio River 1000 miles to Pittsburg and then a 1000 miles back, which took us just over three months. Following the Ohio River also took us deep in American History, some of the first settlers went down the Ohio on their flatboats, many Civil War battles were fought along this river. Traveling along the boundaries of Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania lead us to the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers which at Pittsburg the Ohio is born. It was a fantastic trip which included the cities of Louisville, Cincinnati and Pittsburg, plus a bunch of small cities like Huntington, Wheeling, Marietta, Aurora just to name a few. We even took a side trip up the Kanawha River to Charleston WV. As fall came it was time to head south once again.