Bay Minette Basin
Sunday, October 24, 2004 brint.adams@us.army.mil
A group of five (Matt, Steve, Nancy, Barbara and I) met at Buzbee's on what turned out to be a beautiful Sunday afternoon. We started out as usual on Matt's Monet paddles with a turn back into the man-made canal to view his "Monet Cypress". After exiting, we turned north up through the many grassy islands, where we saw blooming burr marigold, duck potato and cardinal flower. It was also especially memorable for all of the waterfowl sighted, including terns, coots, kingfishers, osprey, mallards, egrets and herons.
As we meandered up along the shoreline, we stumbled across a natural archaeological site, where Hurrican Ivan pushed over several trees back inland. This uncovered some large areas under the trees along the shore where Indians shucked and left thousands of oyster and mussel shells. We stopped and within a few minutes found about a dozen shards of pottery of various origins. One of the pieces of china had a partial monogram stamp on it, which I identified later to be Royal Ironstone made by Alfred Meakin, England somewhere between 1891-1897.
We continued up into the basin as far as we could go, which was pretty far with a high tide. At the end, we came upon a cormorant who let us get within about 20 feet of him while he quietly swam ahead of us.
On our return, we admired the beautiful colors of the sunset as we paddled back between the grassy islands to our take-out at Buzbee's. It was just another day in paradise!
A group of five (Matt, Steve, Nancy, Barbara and I) met at Buzbee's on what turned out to be a beautiful Sunday afternoon. We started out as usual on Matt's Monet paddles with a turn back into the man-made canal to view his "Monet Cypress". After exiting, we turned north up through the many grassy islands, where we saw blooming burr marigold, duck potato and cardinal flower. It was also especially memorable for all of the waterfowl sighted, including terns, coots, kingfishers, osprey, mallards, egrets and herons.
As we meandered up along the shoreline, we stumbled across a natural archaeological site, where Hurrican Ivan pushed over several trees back inland. This uncovered some large areas under the trees along the shore where Indians shucked and left thousands of oyster and mussel shells. We stopped and within a few minutes found about a dozen shards of pottery of various origins. One of the pieces of china had a partial monogram stamp on it, which I identified later to be Royal Ironstone made by Alfred Meakin, England somewhere between 1891-1897.
We continued up into the basin as far as we could go, which was pretty far with a high tide. At the end, we came upon a cormorant who let us get within about 20 feet of him while he quietly swam ahead of us.
On our return, we admired the beautiful colors of the sunset as we paddled back between the grassy islands to our take-out at Buzbee's. It was just another day in paradise!
posted by brint @ 11:40 PM
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