Our first anchorage after Palatka was in an oxbow (a u-shaped bend in the course of a river) in Murphy’s Creek, just off of Dunn Creek. Once settled Lisa and I lowered the dinghy to go explore for gators, eagles and turtles three to four miles up Dunn Creek.

It didn’t take long before we started to spot the gators sunning themselves on logs (below-gator is in the left side of the photo on the log and the turtles are hopping off as we scared them when we went by) beside the shore of the creek along with very large turtles, usually sharing the same log. We’ve heard that the gators don’t move around or eat very much this time of the year. All that we saw were as still as if in a picture. After a nice dinner with Louis and Diane we settled in for a quiet night on the hook with just the sounds of the wild life surrounding our boats to entertain us.