The Admiral called the Demopolis Lock and Dam at about 6:30 am, and they said that there would be a 40 minute wait to finish a down bound lock and chamber re-fill. So, we had a slow start, but the lock is 3.0 miles down stream which takes about 20 minutes anyway. Thus, instead of leaving the dock at 7:20 am, we left at 7:10 am. Big deal! In the overall scheme of things we were more or less right on schedule. We passed through the gates to enter the Demopolis Dam at 7:30 am (picture at right). The lock has a drop of 40 feet with a nice view until you get down far enough that all you see is the lock walls...
There seemed to be a lot of water passing over and through the dam (picture at left). There also seemed to be remnants of an older dam as the water went over two "drops". The picture was taken after we were tied up to the floating bollard in the lock chamber. Yes, there was steam rising off the warmer water in the cool morning air. The view is more or less to the northwest. The clouds on the left were moving to the right (or northeast), and we hoped that this was one of the last waves of clouds following the cold front that had come through last night.
The lock through was very efficient, and we passed through the gates on our way out of the lock (picture at right) a mere 21 minutes later. This was our only lock for the day. Our trip for the day was 97.3 miles to Bobby's Fish Camp, and we were off to a very smooth start. The early morning sun is low in the sky behind the dam.
Unlike the spectacular scenery with the Selma Chalk forming the beautiful white cliffs along the river, the scenery today was much more modest. There is a sharp contrast in rock types across a line that dips steeply to the left. This may be a normal fault where the rocks on the left side have moved down relative to the rocks on the right side (?). Anyway, the rocks here were much more easily eroded by the river, and we only saw a few, scattered outcrops along the river today.
For the remainder of the nearly 10 hour trip, the scenery was nice enough (picture at right), but it was also pretty much the same typical treed river banks that we had been passing for days. It was not a boring trip, but I guess that I found the scenery along the Tombigbee Waterway to be generally "more of the same". We did pass through some very big meanders in the river where the river curved back around itself so much that we could travel for an hour and end up only a mile or so further south. I had taught this in introductory geology for about 41 years, but it was a great perspective to actually experience this, especially at our current aided (slow) speed of 9.3 mph.
We arrived at our destination at Bobby's Fish Camp at about 5:30 pm. When the Admiral had called to confirm our reservation earlier in the day, we were disappointed to learn that the restaurant would not be open unless there were 10 or more customers. So far, they were only expecting two other boats for the night so our hopes for a fried fish dinner were not high. The single, floating dock is about 150 feet long and parallel to the shore so it is accessible on only one side. The dock can handle 3 boats our size, and we had been warn to expect to be asked to raft boats up to 3 deep. The main "lodge" is a store and restaurant combination, which is well known for its fried catfish dinners.
The camp is also the last fuel stop until Mobile, Alabama, which is about 150 miles down river. They also have some small cabins and a boat launch ramp for fishermen. The owner's father had built the camp over 50 years ago. It turns out that he was one of the first customers of the local Texaco distributor. Texaco had a long running yearly series of "Texaco trucks". The owner kept the ones that he was given every year so they have several shelves filled with classic old truck models. In case you are wondering, I checked, and they are not for sale...
For dinner on board we had the Admiral's Hearty Soup with ice cream later for dessert... The marina was remote so there was no cell service or wifi, and the satellite antenna was blocked by thick trees. So, we used our back-up collection of movies that we had recorded and store on a hard drive before we left on the Loop. We watched the movie "Clue" and thoroughly enjoyed it (again). It had been another long day on the water so one movie was quite sufficient as we were headed to bed early.
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