Fog

I was up in the Point Pleasant, W.Va., area Sunday afternoon. The return trip to Huntington started clear but grew foggy. I tried getting a photo of the O. Nelson Jones below Point Pleasant. When I pulled the car off the road, I wanted to get a shot of the Jones passing through low-lying fog. By the time I was in place, the fog wasn't there.

When we got to the Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam, we drove to the end of the downstream fishing areas to see if there were any boats approaching the locks in the fog. No such luck, but the fog was hanging heavy on the river as a light rain fell. I walked 30 feet back to the car to get my camera and an umbrella to protect it. In that 60-foot round trip, the fog had covered the mooring cells below me and my view of the dam above me. I did manage to get a couple of shots of the guidewall in the fog and how the fog seemed to curve over the hill between the locks and the dam.

We made one stop on the way home, at about Mile 294. Adam said he saw the Oliver C. Shearer in the fog. We knew it was the Shearer because we could see the stern of the boat and its huge stacks. But the stacks and the stern were about all we could see. I tried getting a shot, but the Shearer was close to the West Virginia shore and trees were in the way. A few seconds later, as I was putting the camera away, Adam said, “And it’s disappeared into the fog.”

After that, it was too dark and too foggy to see if any other boats were on the river. I really wish I could have gotten that shot of the Shearer.