We’re staying at Demopolis, AL tonight after cruising 60 miles on the river and one lock. We passed “the white cliffs of Epes today, a local interest point near Epes, AL. They’re a very light colored, hard, clay-like material that erodes into interesting shapes over the years. Not exactly the white cliffs of Dover, but it’s all Epes, AL has to brag about, and worth a picture. There was a VERY solid dark grey clay stuck to our anchor this morning when we hauled it up. It took us 10 minutes to scrape and hose it off before we left the park. I wonder if that’s the same stuff?

We hardly saw a boat all day, except for one cruiser and one towboat. The tow had 4 barges full of wood chips which they said were “for that paper mill down below Demopolis, which I believe may be Tom D’s Boise plant in Alabama. They certainly can stack the barges high wit wood chips when they ship them like this. It’s nice to run all day with no other boat traffic because I have to slow down to reduce my wake so I won’t rock the other boats by “waking them”.

The Demopolis Marina is big, well staffed, can handle lots of services, and full of boats. We got one of the few transient slips still available. Last week, they were rafting boats here while everybody waited for two locks to reopen. There are lots of turtles under the docks and people at the marina restaurant throw french fries into the water to feed the turtles. Some of them are large snapping turtles. It’s the Alabama version of feeding the ducks at the Millrace Inn in St. Charles.

We’ll be anchoring out for the next two nights, probably without cell phone service or internet service, and then we’ll be in Mobile and in salt water for the first time.