In the morning we woke up to weeds surrounding our boat! It gives you a bit of a creepy feeling that they are planning to take over the boat! The morning mist enhances that feeling!
We file out of the bay, winding our way through the weeds, hoping not to have any end up in our engines strainers. That would cause our engines to overheat quickly.
The sun is rising as we enter the river and I get a beautiful picture of three of the boats ahead of us.
Tortuga catches the sunrise in the morning mist
We enter an area called the White Cliffs of Eps. No question - they are white!!!
The sculpted cliffs are spectacular.
While most of this portion of the river is apparantly unihabited...
...there are a few stretches of modest homes along the banks.
Signs of the trees that used to fill the area we now transit.
We enter another cliff lined area - not white ones this time but a beauty all their own.
We all spend the night at Kingfisher Marina in Demopolis, pumping out the holding tank, taking on water, washing clothes and having a nice evening out together at a Mexican restaurant that came highly recommended and lived up to its reputation! I had so much fun I forgot to take pictures!!! Shame on me! Demopolis is the dividing line for many boaters as most insurance companies will not insure you if you are below Demopolis before November 1st due to hurricane season.
The next morning we left Imagine Too and Irish Rover behind to enjoy their weekend in the marina watching football. We left early with Tranquillity and Tortuga for a long, windy day on the river to our next anchorage 71 miles away. There are not a lot of places to anchor off the river. Bashi Creek is the next inlet and many Loopers opt to make the long day rather than anchor in the river where the barge traffic is heavy.
The old and the new. Not many old water towers like this around any more.
We only had one lock to go down and were able to drive right in with no wait. We were joined briefly by a 4th Looper - Monarch - but they were a “go fast” boat and disappeared out of sight shortly after clearing the lock.
We had fun watching the white egrets fishing in the lock. I don’t remember seeing egrets in the lock before. There were several putting on a show for us here. They would wait on a bollard and then swoop down to catch a fish. Egrets are very difficult for me to photograph because of their white color. Here I had a captive subject and I spent the entire lock-through photographing the birds and actually caught a few good ones.
Sitting at the top
Sitting on the bollard
Fighting over a fish - both missed!
There was an incredibly long waterfall just after we exited the lock - with an incredibly long spillway in the background!
Unusual rock walls line this section
An incredibly (I like that word lately) well built boat landing in, seemingly the middle of nowhere!
Notice the sweeping root section of this tree hanging over the rock shore line.
This beautiful old bridge has quite a history. It was built during WWI using funds raised at a Rooster Auction. They sold 600 roosters donated by various people (including President Wilson) and one hen donated by Helen Keller. It supposedly got so excited it laid an egg. The bridge was hit in 1979 when a tow boat came down river in high water, hit the bridge, rolled under the bridge and came up on the other side! It is all documented on a website that you can find here: http://all-funny.info/tugboat-going-bridge-complete-story
The barges on this section of the river have a different configuration. The tow is tucked between two barges in the rear instead of pushing all the barges from the back. This offsets the barges in front so there is no middle barge in the front row.
The houses along here have a back country feel. This one looks like it should have a moonshine still stashed somewhere close by.
This family obviously loves to watch the river traffic from their bank.
This has got to be the longest house I’ve seen. I thought it was two houses at first, since both sides are so different, but it is definitely one house!
We are expecting a rain/thunderstorm this evening and the clouds are building. It has been quite windy all day. The sun rays are beautiful has they shine through the clouds.
We find our tiny anchorage with Tranquillity and Tortuga tucked in.
We sneak in behind them and anchor in very shallow water and tie our stern to the overhanging trees on the shore.
It is so peaceful and quite that I don’t even set the anchor alarm. Mike and Karen on Tranquillity took a spin around the cove in the their dinghy so we invited them over for cocktails. They picked up Al and Ruth off of Tortuga and we had a wonderful visit before dinner. The rain shower was due around 6 but it was more like 8 when it hit. Boy, did it hit! Wind and torrential rain surrounded us. Our boat literally jumped at anchor as we were swinging wildly. We both donned our foul weather gear and walked the deck to make sure we were still secure. We were thankfully safe and so is Tortuga in front of us. I quickly set my anchor alarm just in case! The storm passed quickly and we settled in for a quiet night.
Docked at Kingisher Bay Marina - 11/17/17 with Irish Rover, Tranquillity III, Imagine Too, and Tortuga - dinner out at Mexican
Anchored at Bashi Creek - 11/18/17 with Tranquillity III, and Tortuga - cocktails on our boat
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