I love boats.
And as I explained to Chris, looking down from the top of Mount Adams to the BB Riverboat below, if I see a boat, I always have the urge to get on it.
So I bought us tickets online, and we hiked down Mount Adams and made our way to the BB Riverboat dock down at Newport on the Levee.
The sky had clouded over and the wind had seriously picked up by the time we boarded. When the boat started moving, we made our way to the top to look out over the river.
The word “Ohio” itself is Senecan for “Good River.” The river, which was naturally shallow, has been deepened artificially over time by dams. It averages about 15 to 20 feet deep in Cincinnati, but hits its deepest point of 167 feet in Louisville. Thomas Jefferson once called it “the most beautiful river on earth.”
I was very excited to have seen the river from Mount Adams, and Mount Adams from the river, in the same day.
Chris and I took the elevator the third level, where employees were bustling around preparing for a wedding. Then we braved the wind to head up to the fourth deck, where the captain was in the cockpit.
The captain explained how he steers the boat and uses radars to watch for rocks and shallow areas. The whole time we were in the cockpit, he was on the radio with a nearing tug boat, ensuring we wouldn’t meet a massive barge under the bridge.
“I told him we’d meet him on our starboard side before the bridge,” he explained. We looked out the windshield toward the water. It was growing choppier in the wind by the minute.
After a while, when the boat neared its dock, the captain thanked us.
“I’ve got to concentrate now,” he said, and we politely excused ourselves.
A minute later, he came over the loudspeaker.
“It’s a bit windy and the docking might be a little rough,” he said. “You might want to hold onto something. Fair warning.”
There was indeed a little bump when we docked. But we had safely made it to shore. And I had decided that being a riverboat captain is a potential career option, if it comes to that. Adventure number 17 was complete.