This is a common sight in the locks. The herons love to hang out here waiting for fish and trying to frustrate my attempts to take their picture.They fascinate me because they can look like very different birds depending on their posture.
Here he is all hunkered down with his neck tucked in.
Catching them taking off is even harder. Darn! I missed him again!
I did manage to catch him in flight.
Here’s another guy with his neck stretched out. Much prettier posture, I think.
Followed by a VERY rare occurrence - I caught him right after take off!
We met another tow a ways down river coming towards us. Tranquillity contacted them for directions on passing. They responded to pass “on the one”. In river talk, that means we turn to starboard (to the right) to pass them. “One” refers to whistle signals that are still used, but rarely now. One whistle turn to the right to pass and two is turn to the left to pass.
Notice how calm the water is before the boats disturb the surface.
We are out of the “cut” now and into a natural portion of the river that has been flooded by the building of the dams. The forest of dead trees is so sad. The biggest danger here is to go out of the deep channel and meet one of the stumps invisible below the surface. Tranquillity clipped a "deadhead" under the surface and bent his propeller. We narrowly missed the same one.
Tranquillity announced their plan to leave at 6:30 the next morning so we all agreed to go at the same time. It was so hard to get up that early for me, but Bob let me sleep until the last minute.
I did get a beautiful picture of the sunrise as my reward.
As we left the marina, it was obivious that we needed to stay between the markers to get back to the channel. The marina is surrounded by stumps!
It was a long day with 5 locks. We hadn’t intended to go so far, but since we got such an early start and didn’t have to wait for any of the locks more than 30 minutes, we kept going. Tranquillity and Irish Rover both stopped at Columbus Marina but we went on ahead to a lovely anchorage in an offshoot of the main river.
On the way there, the sun was low on the horizon and the activity along the shore was shutting down for the night.
Two tugs tied up side by side
A crane sits quietly in the twilight
The “path” to our anchorage was beautiful!
The bridge supports were all brick
Our anchorage was lined with houses on both sides but nice and quiet.
One of the pretty homes - but it looks empty!
I got to sleep in a little later this morning, but we wanted to get to the next lock with our early risers on Tranquillity so we were underway by 7.
We are not the only ones up early this morning - these guys are preparing for their busy day
As we continued down the waterway it began to open out into a wider, flatter area. Lots of birds around. There is a lot of debris in the water, luckily the water is very calm today so it is easy to spot the weeds and deadheads to steer around them. Not only Tranquillity and Irish Rover, but Imagine Too and Tortuga joined us at the lock! We had to wait about 30 minutes as a tow had just gone down ahead of us, but as this was our only lock of the day, we weren’t dissatisfied. Tranquillity and Irish Rover left the lock first as they travel faster, but Tortuga and Imagine Too are traveling with us.
We see more houses along this stretch of the river than we have in a long time.
This one has a house boat with it! Notice the name - Alligator Hilton!
Did you think I’d forgotten my love of houses? Not only houses along here, but houses with reflections!
And houses with different decorations
And then there are tree houses! I think I like yours better, David - but notice the neat slide coming down
Land yachts are scattered here and there as well.
The tow traffic in this area has been much heavier than we have seen yet. The joke is that the tow captains have marbles in their mouth. Between their deep southern accents and the river lingo, we are lucky
to catch a word now and then.
Here is a particularly pretty barge.
The five of us anchored in a lovely bay - Sumter Recreation Area. It is quite small so Irish Rover and Tranquillity III rafted together to make room for all of us. It is quite shallow as we anchor close
to shore. There were campers on shore and we enjoyed watching their campfire and looking at the stars that night.
Tomorrow - the Tombigbee River!
Docked at Midway Marina, - 11/14/17 with Irish Rover
Anchored at Columbus Cut - 11/15/17
Anchored at Sumter Recreation Area - 11/16/17 with Irish Rover, Tranquillity III, Imagine Too, and Tortuga
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