348. Summer Sunday; so starts another week.

The Belle of Louisville with Jeffersonville, Indiana in the background.


We boarded the Belle of Louisville at 1:30 pm for the 2:00 launch. It was an absolutely beautiful day. We sat on the starboard side of the boat toward the stem, so along the way upriver, our view was of the Left Bank of the Ohio River, that being the Kentucky side. The ride takes you upstream past the Waterfront Park, the as-yet-unbuilt River Park Place development at Beargrass Creek, the various industrial sites just east of Beargrass, past the Kingfish Restaurant and the Louisville Water Company, past Turners and Waldoah Beach and Cox's Park (properly Carrie Gaulbert Cox Park), and almost to the Knights of Columbus building on River Road. Then the boat makes the turnaround for the ride home. Seeing the city skyline from 4 or so miles upriver, and seeing it from the middle of the river during the turnaround, is an awarding sight. The return trip, facing Indiana, starts just upriver from the big American Commercial Barge Lines building out Utica Pike from Jeffersonville. We traversed past homes large and small facing the river, some like cottages, others like castles, including those in the Arctic Springs development. Next comes the long ship and barge building yards of JeffBoat, a long time Louisville area employer. Eventually we arrived alongside the Park and Wharf on Riverside Drive in downtown Jeffersonville - easily one of the best places to view the Ohio, with older large homes overlooking the river, and all unfortunately in the path of the proposed new I-65 bridge being promoted by His Honor the Mayor of Louisville-Jefferson County Metro, the Courier-Journal, and other powers-that-be. But I digress.

Eventually we cross back under the Big Four, the John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and the George Rogers Clark bridges, where we returned to port at the foot of Fourth Street in Louisville. All in all a very enjoyable ride, and the rain only started as we were disembarking. My niece, for whom the ride was taken in celebration of her 21st birthday (a celebration which even she admitted has been going on for about a week), had a wonderful time. She was accompanied by her boyfriend Matt, her grandparents, and her oldest uncle, me.