November 16, 2008: Tensaw River, AL

This morning we had breakfast overlooking the magnificent cypress tree with its silver gray knees reflected in the still water. Then we took the dinghy in and docked it next to a floating cabin that was moored to 40 foot post on the bank.

We rode in with Gil and Martha and decided to go on our way to church to also see the Ciba plant where Gil works in nearby McIntosh, Alabama. Gil is a PhD Chemist and has worked there for many years.

We road by a number of huge factories, railroad cars and pipings on the way in. Gil explained that there is an extraction process of pumping water into a salt (NaCl – sodium chloride) deposit underground and then pumping the dissolved salt up. This is an unusual geographic feature--a giant underground salt dome which was discovered in 1945. The salt solution goes into a process that separates the chloride from the sodium. There are several companies in the McIntosh area that use water from the river and the byproducts of the NaCL.

They showed us the plant, built in 2001, where Splenda is made, the sugar substitute is made by Johnson and Johnson. Gil works at Ciba where they take the chloride and make chemical brighteners that are used in detergents like Tide. They actually create reflection in the cloth to make clothes look cleaner. Gil said that it is what makes clothes glow when put under a “black light”.

After our short tour of the chemical industry north of Mobile, we pulled into Malcolm Baptist Church very near the anchorage. This is a church whose congregation was organized in 1878 as Rose Bud Baptist church. Their building was the traditional white siding country church, and the parking lot had its share of pickup trucks. We were a few minutes early, and met one of their choir members who was full of news about the church and community. The congregation of 25 folks gathered at 11:00 AM with the prelude being played on the piano, “His Name is Wonderful”. We shared traditional hymn singing, rousing anthems by their choir and experienced their friendliness. The scripture passage was from Acts 4: 1-22. The message was on the impact of the “unschooled and ordinary” Peter and John, changed by having been with Jesus. It was great to be with this small group of Christians worshiping on Sunday morning.

After church Gil and Martha took us to Rebecca’s. There were amazing huge live oaks in the sandy parking lot but the real amazing thing was the buffet inside. I did not have some of everything, but I did have fried shrimp, sweet potato casserole, summer squash, collards, creamed corn, chicken pastry, rice, butter beans, a nice salad, and warm peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream. Oink, Oink!

After saying goodbye to family, we headed back down river past the new steel plant that is being built on west side of the TomBigbee. This is a massive plant that will provide exciting employment opportunities for employment in southern Alabama next fall. The friend at church told us that they had dug a foundation for the plant that was 288 feet deep to get to a firm foundation with the width of 360 feet and length of 980 feet. What we could see from the shoreline was a group of 5 or 6 cranes and trucks moving dirt.

Following the river along we saw a white egret or a blue heron every 100 yards or so; sort of like they each had staked out their fishing zones. Tonight we are anchored along with four other boats in the Tensaw River, just beyond the bend, and about 39 miles north of Mobile, Alabama.