October 19, 2008, Sunday: Linton, KY (Dry Creek)

This Sunday morning we cycled back into Grand Rivers to attend the Grand Rivers Baptist church. This church was established in 1889 but the building had been rebuilt much more recently. This service was a joy to attend. The small sanctuary was filled with maybe 110 people of all ages. They were meeting for their last session in five on the topic “Live like you were dying”. The context was the country song by the same name, and the scripture was from Luke 12:13-21 - the parable on the rich man who was building more barns to store his grain when he died. The pastor’s thoughtful message was really on preparing for the most inevitable thing about life (which is death) – it is all about relationship with the real and living God. This church had a wonderful choir to lead in worship and also had a handbell choir that played beautifully. The congregation was very alive and friendly and we felt very welcome. This service reminded us that we are back in the Bible Belt now.

There was a beautiful Victorian house next to the church painted in cream, pine green and a peach.

After church we went back to Patti’s 1880’s Settlement to have lunch. The large house was packed so we were

glad that we made a reservation yesterday. We sat in a room gloriously decorated for Christmas with garlands and lights everywhere. Tom ate the first pot of bread before I had a chance to take a picture of it, so we had to order a second one. The yeast bread with a lovely browned top was baked in a flower pot. We had delicious pork chops followed by a slice of apple pie with coffee ice cream. Yum, Yum.

This afternoon, we set off into the Cumberland River headed towards Nashville. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon for a boat ride and we noticed everywhere that the river was low. It seems strange to find a shortage of water here after just leaving the flooded Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. Unfortunately, this means that a number of the expected places to anchor were much too shallow for us. We almost got stuck in one place where we had to use our thrusters to go sideways back into deeper water.

Finally as the sun was setting, we found an anchorage at Dry Creek (actually there was more water in Dry Creek than most other places). We are near Linton Kentucky, and just north of the Tennessee line.