Cruising on the Mobile River

November 4

I sure will miss this when we have to go home. I love how the scenery changes every day, sometimes dramatically and sometimes hardly at all.  I love how traveling can be considered doing something, even when I’m just sitting. I love the beauty of the water and the shore and the trees and the inlets and the sky, and especially the clouds.

The very best way to wake up is on an anchorage in a quiet cove. I am always amazed at how calm the rivers are at night and how glassy they are first thing in the morning. 

I’m happy to report that it is summer again. The trees are still green and it’s 76° in Mobile. It’s finally sunny today after almost a week of gray skies and rain. As the day warmed up and the temperature of the air reached the warmer temperature of the river, the fog vanished! Just like that. Here one minute, gone the next! 

This is considered one of the most bio-diverse areas in America. There are short palm shrubs crammed onto every inch of shoreline. Big brown pelicans race alongside the boat. When they dive, they slam their faces into the water. Ouch! 11:11 We saw our first wild alligator! His head was about the size of a small dog, and only his eyes and snout were above the water. He swam away when he saw us. 

While I cooked bacon, we passed mangrove trees with their tee-pee shaped roots right at the water’s edge. Gray Spanish moss drips from the trees along the shore. As I washed dishes, a huge eagle flew past just a few feet away. I saw his white tail and his white head and the white and brown stripes on his wings. According to the book, he might be an immature golden eagle. 

The river is not straight by any means - switchbacks, horseshoes, curves. When you’re just looking out the window, you can’t tell, except that one minute the sun is coming through the port windows and a few minutes later it’s on starboard! If you look at the chart, you’re amazed at all the extra miles we have to cover to get anywhere. 

On the rivers, boats like ours are called Pleasure Crafts. We are also called a trawler, a motor vessel or a power boat. At some point on the trip, the tugs became tows. On the Hudson, they were tugs, but here on the inland rivers, they are tows. After Mobile, there won’t be any more tows with barges because we’ll be on the ICW. The barges travel in the gulf to reach New Orleans or Houston or Florida, and we travel on the smaller inland waterways. 

Jena says it rained in San Francisco after more than 200 days of drought.