East Cotton Springs, Mississippi

We stayed in another beautiful cove last night.  After dropping anchor, we paddled in the dinghy over to the Bay Springs Visitor Center. We stepped in major sucking mud and had to clean our shoes and the dinghy later.

  These are the clean Keens drying today.

All visitor centers seem to be alike:  Here are the fox, raccoon, owl; here is the history of the Native Americans and their terrible losses; here is the white man's history of towns and industry.  In Mississippi they added the Corps of Engineers' story of building the waterway.

Because the cove was isolated, we had no cell phone or internet coverage.  It made for a quiet night.  This morning we joined a line of boats entering a lock in fog.  Nine boats traveled through three locks with no problems, and some of us are now at Midway Marina.  Happily, we are moving south!  The sun is out today, and I have on flip flops.

I'm reading River Horse by William Least Heat-Moon.  I can identify with many of his ideas.  He writes about the tedium of river travel, how the moments of excitement and fear are connected by long periods of boredom as you watch miles go by.  Sometimes we see something new:  Yesterday it was riders on horseback beside the Tenn-Tom ditch section.