If Dian Fossey can have "Gorillas in the Mist" ...

 

... can I have "Barges in the Mist"?

Mid afternoon at the Greenup Locks and Dam

 A few photos ...

The Greenup Locks and Dam at Mile 341.0 is one of two on the river with a bridge on it, the other being Markland. When the dam was designed in the early 1950s, the Commonwealth of Kentucky paid the Corps of Engineers $300,000 to design and build the dam piers strong enough to bear the weight of a two-lane bridge. The dam was finished in 1960 or so. Construction on the bridge didn't begin until the early 1980s. The Jesse Stuart Memorial Bridge, named for a famous Kentucky author who lived nearby, opened to traffic in 1985.

FWIW, that $300,000 would be about $3.1 million today.

The motor vessels Garry Lacey and Patoka had left the locks and were rounding the bend below the dam when I parked on the Ohio side.

The river was running high and fast. I don't know how many feet of gate the dam was running, but the gates were higher off the sills than I normally see them.

There were a lot of these whirlpools near the Ohio shore, probably from the hydrolectric power plant on the Ohio side of the dam. It was difficult to judge the size of these vortices, but I would say they were oone to three feet across. As to how deep, no idea.