Today had its own interesting moments. The water was smooth as glass…beautiful to look at but not great for sailing.
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| Smooth, flat water |
As we traveled the Esterville Minim Creek Canal, we came upon a floating swing bridge, with length ~150ft (the width of the canal). It swings to allow cars to cross the canal.
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| Floating swing bridge |
We spent most of the day traveling the cypress swamps on the Waccamaw River. Several times we saw very small floating islands in 30ft of water, again something quite surprising and unexpected.
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| Small floating island |
What amazed me were the cypress trees growing in the water. As you can see in the photo below, even the telephone poles were in the water! And note that the green under the trees is lily pads (or something similar) floating in the water, not ground or grass!
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| Cypress trees growing in the water |
Traveling through the swamps reminded me of the Pogo cartoon that was in the Sunday funny papers when I was a kid. Some of you may recall that Pogo was an opossum that lived in the Okefenokee Swamp. (OK, I had to Google the name of the swamp.) Perhaps Pogos’s comrades (or maybe someone who was not so lucky on the ICW) left that abandoned boat along the swamp’s edge.
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| Abandoned boat along the swamp’s edge |
Speaking of “boats with problems”, we next encountered a HUGE barge coming toward us along the swamps of the Waccamaw. We were quite surprised to see such a large vessel traveling such a narrow waterway. After he passed us, he had to make a sharp turn at a bend in the river, and guess what…he went aground (photo below). As you can see in the photo, it’s hard to believe that he could even make that turn, given his length. We did NOT consider pulling him off! Guess he’ll be there for a while. :-(
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| Large tow and barge piloting the upper Waccamaw River |
We went to bed that night thinking that tomorrow we have to navigate the dreaded Rock Pile…more on that to come.
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