Deerlick Creek Campground

We’ve traveled further southwest and are now outside Tuscaloosa Alabama at Deerlick Creek Campground.

This is another Corps of Engineers campground, which we love. Like most of those, these sites are extremely well made. They have level, concrete driveways and pads and gravel areas abutting wooden decks with picnic tables, grills and fire rings. And since this is a federal campsite our lifetime senior pass gets us this campsite at half off.

Matey and I have been spending the afternoons outside, moving with the shade. With the high temperatures right around 80, the shade is needed.

Wherever we sit we are rewarded with a lovely view.

The only downside is that a terrible thunderstorm with straight line winds of 80mph hit this area on August 2nd. The roads are lined with downed trees and all the trails are closed. They only reopened the park a couple of weeks ago.

Matey and I found one short trail…

that took us down to a fishing dock on Holt Lake.

Holt Lake is on the Black Warrior River and today we drove down to see the Holt Dam, lock and power plant. We were told the lock is closed right now because of cracks. The Army Corps of Engineers is working on a plan for the repairs. There is commercial and recreational use of this waterway that is now interrupted.

We are enjoying the area. We’ve gone disc golfing twice at Ol’ Colony Disc Golf Course which shares space with the Ol’ Colony Ball Golf Course.

This is looking out towards one of the golf fairways.

The disc golf course starts at a ninety degree angle from that. It plays through the trees…

and across the open area around this cone installation. We find these from time to time all across the country. I just looked it up and this is a VOR, a navigation beacon for airplanes that’s been in use since just after WWII. VOR stands for Very High Frequency Omnidirectional Radio Range. Supposedly they are to be retired next year. Meanwhile, we appreciate the space this one creates for disc golf.

How lucky we are to continue to follow early fall from north to south and enjoy our life outdoors and away from cities!