Day 211: - Near Gainesville, AL to Demopolis, AL
Day 211: Wednesday, November 23rd: We awoke this morning in fog and…WHAT'S THIS? ICE!
There was a layer of it on everything. Even the dark canvas on the rail wasn't warmed by the rising sun:
We left the nice little anchorage with Living Well, Pelican, Catnip Too and Seaductress following like ducklings. The fog was bad enough that our radar served us all quite well:
Sometimes we could see the banks:
And the fog thinned as the sun came higher:
We eased into the Heflin Lock; thank goodness it was ready and waiting for us:
Downstream of the lock there was a major dredging operation in progress. Here is one of the workboats and the discharge pipe (with big leak):
Here's a better look at the workboat:
Here's the dredge. This is the only dredge we've seen on the Tenn-Tom in spite of a lot of silted and shallow water:
A few miles downstream we passed the Selden Hurt tow. He had a huge load of wood chips; take a look:
Our next attraction of the day was the "White Cliffs of Epes." This is a striking limestone bluff:
Closer, it's even more impressive:
As we move toward the southern end of the Tenn-Tom proper, it becomes quite isolated with absolutely no development; no boats, no houses - not even a duck blind. It's very pretty:
Pretty soon we arrived at the town of Demopolis, AL. This is the biggest city in Alabama that is on the Tenn-Tom, and it is a major re-provisioning place for boaters traveling the Tenn-Tom. As we pulled into the Demopolis Yacht Basin this little transient side-wheeler from Chattanooga greeted us:
This complex boasts a pretty good restaurant, a pretty good motel and a pretty fair marina ("Yacht Basin" may be a stretch..)
All five of us that locked through this morning eventually made it in to stay here. They had to raft up at the fuel dock to accommodate everyone, but we all made it!
We borrowed the courtesy car (yes!) and made a major grocery run.
Then we had cocktails and a good supper and went to bed early. Bill is still fighting off a cold.
We traversed one lock today for a trip total of 152 so far.
Position tonight: N33 31.651 W087 50.299
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