Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - Foscue Creek Park, Demopolis AL
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US Coast Guard boat house, Demopolis Lock and Dam, Demopolis AL, December 13, 2007
Watching the water in the cove suddenly start flowing out - then reverse in a few minutes. It took me a while to realize what that water flow is about. The campground is a half mile or so upstream of a lock & dam and the lock was being filled from upstream, in this case lifting a barge & tug which appeared out of the fog a half hour or so later, headed up river from Mobile AL I presume.
Later today I went online to the Recreation.gov web site and reserved this great spot for another 5 nights, arriving Thursday, leaving Tuesday. It's interesting how this reservation system works. The local people are not connected to the online reservation system so there is a time delay before they get notification of online reservations. Thus one can reserve a site locally for only two nights and one can not reserve a site online (or by phone) for those two nights. That way there is no overlap. That left me with a one night gap in my reservation so I went out to the gate and filled in that gap. Now I'm good for this site through 3:00 pm Tuesday.
Night camp
Site 42 - Foscue Creek Campground, Demopolis AL
- This is a well maintained US Army Corps of Engineers campground with level paved sites, most with full hookups
- Many sites overlook the water of the inlets off Demopolis Lake on the Tombigbee River
- There is good biking on the park roads
- The campground is pretty full Thanksgiving week and is generally booked solid the weekend of the Demopolis Christmas on the River festival in early December.
- Poor Verizon cell phone service - access is via Extended Network, roaming
- No Verizon EVDO service - access is via the Extended Network and service varies is slow but reliable
- Only 3 miles to Wal-Mart and other services in Demopolis AL
- Find other references to Foscue Creek
- List the nights I've camped here
- Check the weather
- Reserve a site
- Get a map
Listening
As the poet Gary Snyder said so well, "Beyond all this studying and managing and calculating, there's another level to nature. You can go about learning the names of things and doing inventories of trees, bushes, and flowers. But nature often just flits by and is not easily seen in a hard, clear light. Our actual experience of many birds and wildlife is chancy and quick. Wildlife is known as a call, a cough in the dark, a shadow in the shrubs. You can watch a cougar on a wildlife video for hours, but the real cougar shows herself only once or twice in a lifetime. One must be tuned to hints and nuances." After more than thirty years of living in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and spending a great deal of that time out-of-doors, Snyder has seen the mountain lion on just a few occasions. One of these sightings was most unusual. Gary had been visiting a neighbor and was walking down from the nearby ridge to his home when he observed a cougar sitting near one of the windows of the house. The animal appeared to be listening intently as one of Snyder's stepdaughters practiced the piano.