"Ain't been no shrimpin' for 'bout a week now, oyster'n neither" is the response to my question asked at Buddy Grass' shrimp and oyster "shop" that is just around the corner from the Dog River Marina. I thought I might get lucky and get a half bag of oysters before the fisheries shut it down. These two pictures were taken a couple years ago, actually, as I remember.... just before we got the call that my Mother was failing fast and we needed to turn around and go back to Mobile so we could fly back to Madison. Mother was a very interesting person, not afraid to try new things, she really enjoyed Veda L, and we took her for a Mississippi 2 wk cruise when she was 85. Always wanting to have her breakfast with a newspaper to read, she starts eating her breakfast the 2nd day out and says "I can hardly enjoy my breakfast without a paper" I went to my cleaning cabinet and took out a newspaper from 2 years earlier from somewhere in Tennessee and handed it to her; her response "Well, I guess it's news to me!" Every morning we would do a "dumpster dive" into my cleaning supplies for some old news, but she was happy!

These two photos show a shrimp boat above and an oyster boat below; all the times we have left Mobile to either go north or south, I have never seen a prettier sight, I believe a bit of haze made these photos unique.

We are on our way to Bates Lake for the night, it will be about a 7 hour day so will take turns at the wheel. We hope that the entrance to Bates Lake is not silted in so we can make it through the cut. We got in last fall due to high water, but if we can't get into Bates we will spend the night in the Alabama cut-off, or as I call it....The Dismal Swamp. The picture of the floating fish shack is in Bates Lake and has a sign above the window IRA LEWIS. Reminds me of the old song "Drunken Ira Hayes..." Probably some whiskey has been drunk on this front porch I would guess....

Another photo taken in Bates Lake; we put the canoe in and took a little paddle into the back waters, that was until we saw a huge alligator basking in the sun lit water a few yards away, being he was almost as big as the canoe I thought it might be a good idea not to get close enough to get a good picture.

Right now we are going through Mobile Bay, then through the port of Mobile where we see ships from every foreign land docked alongside the channel, always makes us feel very small!