Two photos made despite muddy river banks

This is not a good time of year to go down to the river bank and look around or to take pictures. The mud is very soft and very deep. You take a couple of steps in it and your shoes weigh an additional pound or two. Even the grassy areas are very muddy.

Even the concrete areas close to the river are covered in mud left by the high water of a few weeks ago. There's no incentive to clean it off. Few people launch boats this time of year, and it's more than likely the places will be under water again soon, so why bother?

Having said that, I can still stand along roads and other public spaces up off the river bank and try to get photos. Here are two from earlier this week.

First, here's the mv. Floyd H. Blaske as it comes up the Ohio River, approaching the 6th Street bridge (actual name, the Robert C. Byrd Bridge). In the background is the West 17th Street bridge (actual name, the Nick Joe Rahall II Bridge).

Then, with a snow squall flying as darkness falls, the mv. Linda Reed heads downstream toward Huntington. A few minutes after this was taken, the Reed met the Blaske.

O Trash, Where Art Thou?

A fellow who goes by the handle towboatin46 posts some pretty good river photos on his Flickr site here.

A day or two ago, he posted a photo of the Green River at the mouth of the Barren River in Kentucky. You can see it here. I post the link because I don't lift other people's pictures.

What struck me about this photo is the lack of old tires, milk jugs, Mountain Dew bottles, Bud Light bottles and cans and the other types of trash and refuse that you find along the banks of the Ohio River. Towboatin46 posted some other photos from along the Green River, and you see little if any trash in them, either, at least compared with what I'm used to seeing on the banks of the Ohio.

So here's a tip of my hat the people of Kentucky for keeping that trash out of the Green and Barren rivers, at least upstream of the spots where towboatin46 took his pictures. I sorely wish people in the Ohio River watershed upriver of Huntington WV would do the same.

But when you consider the vast amounts of litter you see along roads in this area, I'll have to wait a long time for that wish to come true.