Today is May 1st (WOW, it’s May already.  18 more days and we’ll be living aboard for a year!), Thursday, and we are still here.  Looks like we’ll be here till Sunday. Looking at the long range weather, it should be nice for the next 10 days.  Hopefully we’ll make it home before any more bad weather hits us.

The storm on Tuesday petered out up here but where we were, at Orange Beach Marina, they were hit with a lot of rain and flooding.  They are about 12 miles west of Pensacola, where they got hit hard with a lot of rain.  Here is a picture taken last night at Orange Beach by one of our friends down there

Orange Beach Marina

It is a little hard to see but those pilings there are holding up the dock….that is underwater.  The water was up about a foot higher but has already gone down.  Another friend who live on their boat told us that the water was almost up to the power boxes and that the boxes were smoking a little before they finally turned off the electric.  Quite a few of the boats there are Sport Fisher boats with really high “tuna towers” that are in covered slips.

Sport Fishing boat with “tuna tower”

The docks there don’t float so boats like this don’t have a lot of head room when the water raises.  I would imagine they might have had to move some of those boats out of their covered slips.

Down here we are just hanging around waiting for the water to go down.  Every day we check to see when the river will be down to normal, looks like Sunday now.  This is what we would have to dodge if we left today

70 Foot Tree in River

Here is what the gas dock looks like today.  We pulled in here Friday night to get more fuel, no room for us to pull in today.

Gas Dock

The debris is just swirling around and filling up the harbor.

Here is some poor unfortunate animal.  What do you think it is?  See the little claws?  Kinda gross :).  We like to make sure we cover all the unusual items on a trip so you can get the full effect of travel on the river :).

Bloated Animal

This boat came to the gas dock today

Cruise Boat

We talked to some people that were on it.  The boat stopped at Demopolis to refuel and the passengers got off to walk around.  They told us they got on at New Orleans.  Then they traveling up thru the Mobile Bay, and are heading up the TennTom, down the Ohio river and then down the Mississippi river back to New Orleans, a 16 day trip.  I’ve seen the Mississippi Queen boats but never a boat like this.  Looks like fun.  Here is their website in case anyone is interested http://www.blountsmallshipadventures.com/

Remember the snakes I mentioned?  Here is one swimming by the ramp we walk over to get to the parking lot

Snake ISH! 3 Feet long

I’ve posted a few more pictures on the More Pictures page of the town of Demopolis.

Stay tuned……