A Study of the Ohio River

But first a little excitement for today...I posted pictures a while back of the start of a little half inch scale kitchen (which someone pointed out I should explain what that is - it's where 1/2" in miniature equals 1 foot in real life) and mentioned that I was going to have to do something about the fact that the table, chairs and hutch were painted country blue and the stove was cream and green.  Well, the very nice lady I bought the furniture from (and have known through miniature shows for a number of years now) agreed to take back all my pieces, repaint the blue parts for me and exchange the hutch I had for a slightly shallower one.  I got them in the mail today and so here's a picture of that.  I am so pleased with it and am all excited about getting back to work on creating the scene.  Although I think I'm going to be starting from scratch.  The longer my shadowbox "box" sat on the windowsill waiting for the furniture, the less I liked it - particularly my attempt at a hanging lamp.  But that's all right...

Now, for my study of the Ohio River.  I could have sworn that I posted pictures of the river in its normal state at some point in time but I've searched and I didn't.  At any rate, yesterday I could see from my windows that the river was looking high and since it had poured rain for about the prior 24 hours, I decided I would brave the cold, walk down to the river, and see what was what.  First of all, it was freezing!!!  In the 20's but very windy so very cold.  But I got down to the river and, sure enough, it was quite high.  This time I had thought ahead and had my camera.  So I took these pictures (thinking I would show them side by side with the normal pictures that don't exist).

Now the marina that looks like it's in the middle of the river isn't.  Normally, it's quite close to the bank of the river.  (That's Ohio across the river, by the way.)  And in the picture on the right, you can see almost two of the handrails going down a stairway that leads to a lower walkway (completely submerged now).  The portion on the left beside the stairs that looks like very deep stairs are terraces where people sit in the summer because there is a bandshell moored at that lower walkway where they have concerts.  So, even though I froze my little fingers doing it, I recorded how high the river was.

Then last night I heard one of those little teasers they do to try and get you to watch the news and they said they were going to be looking at the possibility of high water and I thought "hmmmm".  So today, thankfully not quite as windy, sunny and probably a little warmer, I thought I'd check and see if it actually was higher than yesterday.  I fortified myself first with a hotdog and chips from Sam's Hot Dogs.  Got to the river and it was higher.  I didn't do another shot of the marina cause it still just looked like it was in the middle of the river.  But here's the same shot of the handrail...

And the picture on the right is shooting down at the top of the stairs where yesterday you could see about 8 or 9 steps and today you see none.

These two are to try and show the highest I have ever seen the water.  The one on the right is taken looking up from near those submerged stairs to the rest of the stairs that take you to street level.  The high black thing in front of the building is the flood wall.  I've never seen it closed, but one time since I've been checking the river, I did see all these stairs submerged - it was pretty incredible.  There was a 1937 flood (before the flood wall and various dams) where the water went up to the street that building is on and was at about the second story level of the buildings on that street!  And then the picture on the left is up almost at the top of those stairs looking across to Ohio.  I do love this river...