Exploring was the theme for today so we broke out the road atlas and took off. We started by driving into Pomeroy, OH, which is a little town on the Ohio River. Mason, WV, is on the other shore. We drove east, basically, going upstream until we pulled over at Racine Lock. At Racine Lock there is a dam and parallel locks so traffic can go both ways at the same time but the locks here is not nearly as impressive as the Eisenhower Lock up on the St. Lawrence Seaway because the locks at Racine only lift the boats about 5 feet. However, the Ohio River locks seem to be a lot wider than the 80 foot wide locks on the St. Lawrence. The Ohio River in this section is actually just a series of lakes with locks at both ends.
We continued along the north shore of the Ohio until we ran into Hwy 33 where we turned right and soon crossed the river into West Virginia. The road we took through West Virginia was merely the road running west along the south shore of the Ohio. The West Virginia side is quite scenic most of the way. Every 5 or 10 miles they have built very large coal-fired power plants on both sides of the river and, although they are monstrous engineering marvels, they are hideously ugly and they spew out enormous amounts of pink steam. I am such a fool – I always thought steam was white.
We continued driving downstream on the WV side of the river getting several views of large barges tied in groups of 12 (3 wide and 4 long) being pushed by giant square bow tugs. I am impressed that the tug drivers can maneuver these quarter mile long bulk carriers into the locks without smashing into the lock walls. I noted the lock walls are armored with long steel plates running the length of the lock probably installed to fend off the barges before they grind up the concrete lock walls. The river is very wide in this section because barges going upriver and downriver did not seem to have any trouble passing each other.
We crossed from WV back into OH at Mason / Pomeroy, filled the tank with diesel and retired to the Invader for some light porter drinking.