Last stop before salt water……..Bates Lake, which is about 55 river miles up the Black Warrior and Mobile rivers from Mobile. The highlight of the day was passing through the last lock at Coffeeville today. No more locks until we pass New York City and go up the Hudson. Owing to all the swampy land and high river banks in Alabama, there are very few places to anchor where you can get out of the navigation channel and Bates Lake gets us completely out of the river into a creek estuary (not really a lake). The lake is completely cypress swamp one side and lined with fishing shacks and summer cottages on the other side.

With temps in the low 70s, I thought it would be fun to dinghy back up the main river channel to take Daisy to a big beach we saw about a mile before we turned in to Bates Lake. WRONG! The beach was neat but you couldn’t leave the sand near the river without getting near the grasses and raising clouds of mosquitoes. Even though we never got bitten, that turned into a quick trip.

The one neat picture is of a giant cypress tree with hanging Spanish moss hanging down and reflecting in the perfectly mirror smooth water of the little lake.