25 Apr 14

Up early to catch the 08:30 lock opening at South Mills. We pulled into the Dismal Swamp Visitor Center dock about 09:45 and found “Raison d’Etre” tied up there. After we found them, we all went on a long (16 mile) bike ride on trails around the Dismal Swamp, but saw very little in the way of wildlife and interesting sights; we did see a wild turkey, a deer and (possibly) a black bear, although it was too far away for confirmation. We got back to the boats about 15:00, quite tired and spent an hour trying to decide whether to stay the night or move on to the Deep Creek Lock, where there was reportedly a good Mexican restaurant. Just at 16:00, 3 other boats came in looking to raft up to us, so we decided to leave. The weather forecast was ominous, as a line of violent thunderstorms were approaching from the WSW. We got tied up to the bulkhead just upstream from the Deep Creek Bascule Bridge at 18:50, just before the heavens opened. We enjoyed a pretty violent lightning storm from the cockpit over cocktails. The Mexican restaurant was only 50 ft away, but it has closed down, and was raining too hard to go there anyway, so we hosted Charlie and Anita to chicken curry for dinner.