M/V Detroit in a favorite spot

So this past weekend, I got a lesson in how much 16-year-old Adam wants to protect me.

While we were at Cheshire, Ohio, getting pictures of two AEP boats over at Lakin, W.Va., we saw the Detroit come down the river. I got a few pictures.

Then we went down the river a few miles to wait for it to pass Addison with the Kyger Creek and Gavin power plants in the background. This was the spot where I had gotten one of my favorite pictures of the Detroit in October 2010. But in the five years since, the vegetation on the riverbank had grown, and we no longer had such a clear shot.

So, I decided to stand on a guardrail post close to the berm of State Route 7, a pretty busy two-lane road. Adam kept protesting that I could fall off and get hurt, especially if some jerk came by in a pickup and tried to startle me by blowing his horn. Soon after he said that, some moron did just that.

So I got down off the guardrail post and we tried to find a place where we could go down to the river and shoot without trespassing on private property. We found none.

So we walked back up to our previous spot, and I tried holding my camera as high as I could for a test shot. But that wasn't high enough. So I talked Adam into standing on the guardrail post for me, and I told him what kind of photo I wanted. He obliged. As we waited for the Detroit to come, I told him I appreciated him watching out for me and not saying something like, if you fall and hit your head on a rock and die, can I have the car?

The boat came, and Adam got off some good shots.

As we walked back to G&G Grocery, or G.G. Grocery, the boat passed us and I got a few more snaps.

Overall, a good day for stalking and shooting towboats.

Plus Adam is coming around to the idea that these new Marathon boats might be more pleasing to the eye than the new AEP boats are. We'll see if that's a long-term change of opinion.