We were just looking for a place for an overnight near Little Rock. I booked us for one night into Willow Beach Campground. It’s a Corps of Engineers campground so I was hoping for a level site where we wouldn’t have to unhook, and we got that.
We’re taking the trailer into a shop tomorrow to have them check the rear axle. We’re chewing up the insides of our rear tires, especially on the right side. We had to put our spare on in Tennessee.
Luckily I found this site which is quite private and quite lovely and less than 10 miles from the shop.
It’s a small campground with no trails…
but plenty of beautiful trees, like these sycamores.
It sits between the Arkansas River…
and Willow Beach lake, which is an old oxbow of the river.
At our site we can see the river on one side…
and the marshy lake on the other. Totally fine for an overnight stop!
There are some campgrounds that go on our list for second stops, if we’re passing that way. George P. Cossar State Park in northwest Mississippi has made that list.
It sits on Enid Lake about 70 miles south of Memphis, and this is our view from the back of our site.
We might not have enjoyed our stay as much in the site I originally booked. That driveway was narrow, bumpy and uneven.
In my defense, I chose the site when we were still using a satellite antenna and Dish TV. From the campground map I thought there might be a clearing to the southwest, and per my Winegard satellite antenna aiming app, it looks like we might have had a chance to get reception.
However, Starlink needs a view of the sky towards the north, and that wasn’t going to work.
We looked around, site 7 was open and looked promising. I made a phone call and we were able to transfer our registration.
So now we have a view of the lake…
and Starlink has a pretty clear view of the sky.
Not only is this a pretty park with full hookups, it has two disc golf courses.
Basket 12 and the tee for 13 are just steps from our site.
We’ve already played 23 holes. We started at 13 and played through 18 early this morning with Matey along. But he wasn’t doing well, so I walked him a bit on the leash and took him back to the camper. Then Bud and I played another round, but this time I forgot my phone, which has a map of the course, and we missed basket 3 entirely. Hence 23 holes.
Along the way we spotted this tree and I had to get a picture. This looks like lightning damage, and I wonder if this was originally two trees that fused and were then partially split. In any case, the crown of the tree (a pine) looked fine.
We have only one more day to enjoy this place, but we may well be back.
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!
Adler’s band was in a regional Bands of America competition last Saturday in Johnson City, Tennessee. Jamie said she would go but it’s a 10 hour drive from her house (the red pin) to Johnson City (the grey with white dot). I saw that our location at Cathedral Caverns State Park (the green tree dot) was about halfway there. So I told her if she could get anywhere near us I would drive from there. She got plane tickets to Chattanooga, I extended our stay at the park by one day so we didn’t have to leave until today, Monday, and off we went.
The competition was held in the indoor football field of East Tennessee State University; the Ballad Health Athletic Center you can see just past Jamie.
It’s a beautiful campus and Johnson City is set in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, very nice. Fortunately they were just north of the devastation from Hurricane Helene.
The whole thing is a very complicated production. There were 22 bands that participated and they filled up several parking lots with their buses and gear.
Schools have a variety of transportation equipment.
Lake Hamilton just got a brand new semi tractor…
with a trailer designed for band equipment. They don’t have a logo on the trailer yet.
For a trip this long they use commercial buses for the kids, for closer competitions they ride school buses.
We found the kids hanging out having lunch outside on the campus. That’s Jamie walking across on the right, the only picture I got of her face.
They practice outside on the fields. Each school is assigned a parking area and a practice area.
Then they have to bring all their instruments, equipment and props across to the field. If they are one of the 12 schools that make finals they do this all over again in the evening.
While the preliminary scores were being compiled the East Tennessee State University Marching Band put on an exhibition of their show “Happy Together” which included this version of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”. You can see the high school bands in the seats behind them where they go after they perform and haul all their equipment back out.
As an encore the ETSU Band turned around and performed for the high school bands. I thought that was a wonderful gesture. They also announced they gave band scholarships and invited seniors to come and talk to them. Pretty good marketing.
Lake Hamilton made finals. Here they are gathered while Mr Schultz, their band director, gives them a pep talk before finals. They made some major marching errors in preliminaries and he is making sure that doesn’t happen in finals.
This is Lake Hamilton getting ready to go on for their final performance. During the performance of the band that precedes them they file into the end zone with all their equipment. The man in light colored pants is a timer. The last band is now carrying and pushing all of their stuff off the field. When the timer indicates, the other band is to have cleared the field and Lake Hamilton gets about 2 or 3 minutes to get all their stuff out and in place, including amplifiers, ladders for the drum majors and all their props.
And then they perform. These bands are pretty amazing considering the members are from 14 to 18 years old. Towards the end of this clip you can see Adler as I zoom in on his group of saxophone players. He’s the tall one in the middle. The whole thing from set up to tear down fits in a 15 minute time slot.
Then it’s back out to the parking lots to wait. We found Adler with his new bandana. The kids all got them for making finals.
He and his laffy taffy posed for me…
and then he gave me something between his performance smile and his regular smile.
Jamie and I went out for a quick supper and came back to find the kids all lined up to go back in for final awards. We were in time to see the lone class 1A school put on an exhibition. They did not make finals, but did win their class, so got to perform again. There were only 30 kids total, only 13 that marched and they were very, very good. But a band of 30 can’t compete with a band of 300.
The bands marched in to the cadence of the ETSU drum line. Lake Hamilton is the group with their color guards all sitting with skirts flared around them.
The group on the end is that 30 person band.
And here are all twelve of the finalists. Lake Hamilton did do better. They got ninth place and beat the school that won third place in their class (2A) in preliminaries. But in finals all the classes compete together, and there are also 3A and 4A schools.
Here I am at the end of a long day with my grandson, who is eating laffy taffy again! He said he was happy with their placement, but not with the score.
Jamie and I got to our hotel at 11:00 PM. The kids went back to the camp where they were staying. Sunday I drove Jamie back to the Chattanooga airport and then I drove the ninety miles back to Cathedral Caverns State Park. I was home at about 4 PM. Jamie flew to Little Rock and then drove home to Hot Springs. She got home at 12:30 AM. Adler went to Dollywood with the band and rode the bus all night. He got home at 5 AM Monday morning, at which time Jamie had to get up and drive to school to pick him up. It was a tiring weekend for all of us, but very much worth it.
We are now in northeast Alabama at Cathedral Caverns State Park. It’s a nice site; new, nicely made with full hook ups..
and it’s situated in a pretty valley.
There are decent trails…
and nearby disc golf.
But what made me choose this particular park was the cave.
According to the literature the name Cathedral Cavern is because of the 126 foot by 25 foot natural opening to the cavern.
According to our guide it was the reaction of the first developer’s wife on being taken back to this room. I like his version.
Wherever the name came from, it is a spectacular place, both immense and ornate.
It is home to the largest known stalagmite…
and the biggest flowstone wall in a commercial cave.
Many of the more spectacular views were made accessible by this tunnel, the only place in this huge cave that had to be dug out. I measured it on the way out, just under 100 paces. It took nine months to excavate back in the 60’s with picks and shovels and dynamite.
Past the tunnel is the cathedral room and this flowstone formation they call the frozen waterfall.
There were a lot of very large and very tall stalagmites.
Of the stalactites these were among my favorites. These are thought to have cracked off in the 1811-12 earthquakes that formed Reelfoot Lake in Western Tennessee, when the Mississippi ran backwards. The ends of the broken stalactites fell into thick mud beneath them. That mud shifted slightly to the left and then dried up, leaving these formations just a bit disjointed.
On the way out I noticed several formations..
that were blue green in color. By then our guide was far behind us, making sure we all got out, and I didn’t get to ask what mineral might have caused this.
We have toured a lot of caves,
but were pleasantly surprised with the beauty…
and grandeur of this one.
We’ve camped about 10 times in Alabama and never thought to come across something like this.
The lovely Welcome Center…
is built right over the exit to Mystery River, the underground watercourse that made the cave.
Whenever I think about quitting this camping life or perhaps moving much slower I think, “But there’s so much more to see.”
We are now spending 5 nights at Big Ridge State Park in Tennessee. This is a change from our original reservation, which was at Douglas Dam Tailwater Campground. That campground, just below the Douglas Dam on the French Broad River, was closed due to the recent flooding from Hurricane Helene. Big Ridge sounded like a safer bet.
Apple Maps took us up State Route 61 for our final leg of the journey. I noticed it had some disconcerting squiggles as we got closer. I checked the park website for directions and they had a link to Google Maps which showed the same route, so we took it.
Well, those squiggles turned out to be 10 mph hair pin turns that we needed two lanes to negotiate with the trailer. They were so tight that Bud wanted to go back and take pictures. This is not the tightest one, but it is one where Bud was able to drop me off so I could film him coming back through the turn.
Even getting the video was difficult. Coming back from the park we mistakenly got on the truck detour around the curvy section (we didn’t see that the way we came in). We then ended up on this road, Ousley Gap Road, trying to get back to RT 61. Thank goodness we weren’t pulling the trailer.
When we first got to the park I asked at the office if there was a better way out. “Which way did you come in?” the woman asked, “Did you turn right or left off 61 onto the park road?” I said right and the three people in the office all laughed. Obviously that is not the best way to come. Getting backed into our site was no picnic, either. Notice the drop off and fence along the narrow park road, just where Bud would swing the front of the pickup wide to back in. But Bud made it and now we are here and we don’t have to go back that road.
It turns out that this park is on Norris Lake, formed by a dam on the Clinch River; the first dam the Tennessee Valley Authority built back in the 1930’s. But this river and lake were not affected by the flooding.
Matey and I have had some lovely morning walks here.
We walked over to the “old grist mill” which turns out to be a 1968 reconstruction.
There is also a pretty decent disc golf course nearby.
It’s all wooded, but the fairways aren’t too tight and the understory is open enough that you can find your disc if it does go astray.
It’s also clearly marked between holes, so it’s easy to get around. We’ve played there twice.
And in the afternoons, when it warms up, Matey and I have a nice view sitting outside the trailer. No tent needed, no bugs. After all the trouble getting here I’m glad we have a few days to enjoy it!
Yesterday we drove 290 miles to get to Claytor Lake State Park. Unlike most of our travels, the whole way was down an interstate, I-81. And there was a lot of truck traffic; at times Bud was going up to 70 mph to get by slow traffic in the right lane without slowing down the left lane. With our current trailer and hitch he generally cruises at 64 on a smooth interstate. In any case, the towing went fine and our new campsite is nice.
But this is what our hitch looks like now. We have a fancy new hitch that distributes the trailer weight towards the front of the truck and helps control trailer sway. It has a big bolt on top and a gauge on the side so you can easily adjust it. But the last two times we hooked it up it didn’t seem to stay adjusted and there was a lot of side to side motion until it was all hooked in. So Bud took it off to inspect it.
And we found one bolt (invisible in use and not part of the regular inspection and maintenance) had sheared…
and its counterpart was bent. So although there was no chance that the trailer would come off, we definitely did not have either the weight distribution or the sway control we should have had. Good thing this trailer tows well.
And we are at a lovely park,
with gorgeous trees…
like this small tree called peanut butter shrub,
and this (these) beautiful fungus (fungi). (It’s hard to know individuals or multiples with fungi). Anyway, even though we have to stay an extra day to take the hitch to a machine shop because the broken bolt won’t come out, we are lucky to be here.
We were reminded just how lucky when we went to look at Claytor Lake.
This lake is formed by a dam on the New River and all water access is closed, obviously.
Even though we are miles downstream from the worst flooding from Hurricane Helene, the detritus that now litters the shores shows what others endured.
I hope whoever put this key in this door was long gone before the door came loose.
I thought this might have been a bench that had been part of this fishing dock…
until I read the inscription on the plaque.
So yes, even with a broken hitch and modified plans, we are very lucky.
I planned this trip so we could visit Gettysburg. I had been here in my early teens with my parents and never forgot it. I wanted Bud to see it. Most of it is acres and acres around the town, preserved with the fences, cleared fields and woods as they were then and dotted with monuments.
There is a Visitors Center with many of the thousands of artifacts found after the battle.
I preferred the musical instruments…
to the buttons…
or the guns.
We put Matey in the stroller and walked out to see the area closest to the Visitor Center.
This is the first monument I read, to Companies E and I of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry. What struck me was the last line of the inscription. “Erected by the survivors of the regiment.”
This is the view from Cemetery Ridge, where the Union troops were arrayed. On the third and final day of this bloodiest battle of the Civil War 12,000 Confederate soldiers under Pickett charged from their position on Seminary Ridge. The Union lines held and Lee was thwarted in his attempt to bring the war north of the Mason-Dixon Line. It was moving and sad to stand in these places and think of the thousands who died here.
We then took the auto tour. We drove through miles of beautiful countryside dotted with monuments to the fighters and the fallen.
There were hundreds of monuments, large…
and small.
70,000 Confederate soldiers fought 93,000 Union soldiers on these fields and woods. 51,000 of them were killed, injured or captured.
This inscription was typical. The units memorialized fought many battles. It is staggering to think of the harm we inflicted on each other during this awful war.
I will leave you with this image, the Eternal Peace Memorial. Seventy-five years after the end of the war, 1,800 Civil War veterans helped dedicate this memorial to “Peace Eternal in a Nation United”.
We’ve moved on and we are now at Ives Run Recreation Area, a Corps of Engineers site just above a dam on Crooked Creek near Tioga, Pennsylvania. We have neighbors across the way but three sites on our right and four on our left are empty.
There is a boat launch just down from our site onto the little lake above the dam.
There is a well maintained day use area.
And there is disc golf.
The course is nicely mowed, although the original nine holes are a bit short, even for us,
and the set up for adding nine more holes ends up with holes that are all very long. Still, we had fun and it was pretty.
With sugar maples and paved sites with full hookups, we both agree, it’s a very nice park.
I just realized it’s been eleven days since I posted. After brief stops in Vermont and northern New York, we’ve now been at Four Mile Creek State Campground for six days.
For the most part this has been a pleasant surprise. The last time we were here (May of 1999) they were pulling RV’s out of their waterlogged sites with tractors and dumping front end loads of wood chips at people’s trailer doors so they could get out without sinking into muck. It’s drier now, but I also see they’ve added drainage in what were the worst spots.
This weekend the place has filled up…
but we still have a distant view of the lake from our campsite.
It is nice to be back on the shore of Lake Ontario.
I always love looking across the lake at Toronto.
Of course the real reason we’re here is to visit family and friends. And we have been doing that. And I have been mostly forgetting to take pictures. But yesterday I caught my sister Joan and my mother as they were looking for a checkout line at Walmart. No one would ever guess that my mom, hurrying along behind Joan, was 105. How lucky we are to have her.
I took no pictures of Dick and Sue Manning on Wednesday, but Thursday, when my friend Erin and I went to Amherst State Park I did take some photos.
Neither of us knew this existed but found it when looking for a trail where we could walk with Matey. It’s a lovely place, though quite small. A fellow walker told us the land came from an order of nuns who used it to grow the food for the convent. They sold this land, just north of the village of Williamsville, for a pittance to the state of New York so it could stay open land.
We then put Matey in the stroller and walked in Glen Falls Park, where dogs aren’t allowed.
This little pond is formed by the water that was diverted and used to turn the mills. I would guess that makes it the old mill pond.
And this is the old mill,
now a candy store with a very old interior.
I also remembered to take a few photos of Erin’s back yard. With its little falls and lily pond…
it’s stepping stones leading…
to a secret garden behind the garage her place is a like a botanical garden in miniature.
So we have been enjoying ourselves and enjoying the pleasures of Western New York, including this butterfly on Erin’s giant butterfly bush…
and this cluster of tiny, tiny mushrooms here at the State Park.
On the Roam Again 