Two boats on an icy river

I saw something interesting when I went down to the river with my camera today. There was ice in the channel, and I saw the Ohio Valley and the Nashville both upbound pushing empties. First, I've never seen the two boats heading in the same direction back-to-back before, and when they have gone upstream, they've usually pushed loads. On top of that, when they went under Huntington's East End bridge, they used the channel on the Ohio side, not the main channel in the middle of the river.

Here's the Nashville, formerly the Valvoline, bringing up the rear.

And here's the Ohio Valley about to go under the bridge. The sun was in the wrong spot to get a good image of the boat without a lot of work.

The rest of these are what I got as I drove and chased the boats up the road. First, the two boats as seen fro the bridge. That's the Nashville in the center of the picture, with the Ohio Valley up ahead. It looks like the Nashville is following the path the Ohio Valley cut through the ice.

And here are three of the Ohio Valley, taken as I stopped my car on the highway to get some snaps before traffic came up behind me.

There was no place to park my car other than in someone's driveway, so these were what I could get, traffic and vegetation permitting.

Later, other river ice pictures from today.