08/18/2011 - Dominic Creek

Launch: Cliff's Landing off Highway 225 about 14 miles north of Spanish Fort
Launch Cost: Free
Destination: Exploratory paddle of lower Bottle Creek including Lower Fisher Lake and Dominic Creek including Alligator Lake.
Distance: 28 miles (round trip).
Paddle time: 9-1/2 hours
Weather: Slightly foggy at sunrise. Sunny. Paddled against tidal current going both upstream and downstream. Current ranged between 0.5 and 1.5 mph. No waves. No wind until later afternoon. Temperature was tolerable as most of the time was spent paddling in the shade.
GPS Track: To view or download the GPS track of this trip, Click Here.

Header image shows river houseboats lining the Tensaw River just south of Cliff's Landing.

Sunrise on the Tensaw River.

The I-65 bridges going across Middle River.

It was a treat to see Mayfly swarms in action along the banks of Middle River. Mayflies are also called One-Day Flies because in their adult state they only live about a day and their sole purpose in that day is mating.

I ate a few ripe Muscadine Grapes as they were growing wild all over the river banks.

Some of the green feathers are visible on this Green Heron.

Saw about a dozen blue tail skinks on this trip.

Dominic Creek is beautiful and eventually it gets shallow and log jammed.

This was an odd thing to see - someone had made sandbag dams across a couple of small tributaries off Dominic Creek.

A harmless water snake.

Do alligator hunters kill bigger alligators and discard the smaller ones or are these just natural deaths? It is a strange coincidence that Alligator hunting season just began and all of a sudden dead alligators are seen along the shorelines.