We are taking a planned day off with a 2 night stay in Demopolis, AL. Terry and I had visited Demopolis once during a road trip, and it was a planned stop on our first loop. The old town square and waterfront park are really quite pretty. The new Kingfisher Bay Marina has great floating docks, club room with laundry facility and nice bathrooms as well as a swimming pool. Unfortunately, the pool is not heated and was only 75 degrees. I am saving my "cool" water swimming efforts for the Great Lakes... Other facilities like a restaurant/bar, motel service and storage are accessible at the adjacent Demopolis Marina by free loaner golf carts. They also have a free loaner car, which really is necessary because most of the shopping and services are now about a mile south of the old downtown.
With the junction of the Black Warrior River with the Tombigbee River just up river and the Demopolis Dam just down stream the area around the marina is pretty wet/swampy so it is an ideal stop for migrating waterfowl. Here are geese getting ready to group up into flocks and head out early in the morning. At night while walking Lucky the goose calls fill the air instead of road noise, etc. during the day, there would be a few geese flying low over the marina and calling as they did. All in all a wonderful the geese provided wonderful sights and sounds.
The photo at the left shows the lovely sunrise over the marina. Since I was asleep, the picture was kindly taken by the Admiral who was out early walking Lucky. After I slept in, we picked up the loaner car about 11:30 am for a trip to a local super market and lunch. We picked a really good local (?) restaurant called Cane Cutters that features southern cooking. I had half a smoked chicken, sweet potato fries, coleslaw, beans and a hush puppy for $9.99, which also included iced tea. The food was great as well as the price, and I saved half of my chicken for a later meal. The roof at the left in the sunrise picture is over some covered docks. We had opted for an uncovered dock so that the satellite TV would work.
We were talking to one of our neighbors and a fellow Looper before our shopping trip, and one of them recommended the local theater that they had seen "Steel Magnolias" at a few nights earlier. It just so happened that they were having a 2:00 pm matinee performance today, and he volunteered to drive us and pick us up. One of the disadvantages of marina loaner cars is that they come with a daily time limit, and our earlier trip had used up our allocation so his offer to drive was greatly appreciated. We arrived back in the loaner car with barely enough time to change and head back out. We arrived at the theatre with 5 minutes to spare. The photo at the right shows a greeting table in the lobby with the ticket booth in the background. The Canebrake Players use the theater in a former elementary school so the facility was excellent, and it has been upgraded with sound proofing curtains on the walls, and even with no sound system, the actresses could easily be heard by the audience. One of the Admiral's favorite movies is "Steel Magnolias", and she thoroughly enjoyed the play as did I. At the intermission they had punch and quite a good selection of cookies, brownies, etc. I must admit that I did "fall off the wagon" for my diet. Well, to make up for my excesses we walked the 1.5 miles back to Lucky Us. The walk was great on a warm, sunny afternoon, but it hardly was enough to work off my excess calories...
We had a quiet dinner on the boat along with several long walks for Lucky. She was effectively playing the guilt card for having been left alone so much of the day. I cannot complain too much as my Fit Bit recorded a much needed 6.91 miles for the day. The photo at the left shows some of the many rose bushes in brilliant bloom at the marina. They are part of two rows of roses that line the walkway from the parking lot down to the start of the floating piers.
They had an extensive dog walking area along the side of the parking lot. They had mowed most of this area, except for large patches of Red Clover. The clover (photo at the right) obviously derives its name from the color of the flowers and not the (green plant). The leaves as well as the plants are much bigger than the wild clover that I am much more familiar with from other areas. The plants with the flowers must have been 18 inches high, and they have this beautiful crimson almost maroon color.
Well, it was not exactly a restful day, but it was a busy, fun day in a really nice small town. It would be tempting to stay up late tonight, but tomorrow is a long day on the water with a departure planned for about 6:00 am. Oh boy, here we go again.
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