Sweet Home Alabama

Great way to start the day

Our stop following breakfast at Bob"s Fine Food.

I listen what people say about places they seem to know about but until I sees it myself, I've learned not to believe it. Originally I had planned to spend a bit more time in the deep south but the amount of away time I had available began to dwindle as the launch date kept moving forward. So...I deleted the deep south in favor of skirting the tops of Alabama and Mississippi. We left Memphis with Savannah Georgia as our destination but we left Memphis a bit late ( a lot more leaves to rake than I planned) so we had to choose a mid point to spend the night preferably camping under the stars. Checking the road map while rolling along the lush green rural countryside, Sharon noticed a mark on the map had a tee pee (a campsite designation) printed just south of the little Alabama town of Alexander in Tallapoosa County. The campsite was in the Windy Creek State Park and as always we pulled up to the office much later than most outdoors type folks arrive. With a little help from a friendly park ranger we did the late entry form, listened to a quick description of what sites are available, and began our hunt for the evenings campsite. Naturally we immediately became lost ending up in the day use only picnic area but the night ranger drove up and suggested we follow him to a nice on the water's but not before he began a long explanation as to how to exit the park. I quickly realized that people from Alabama love to talk and talk and talk. I pride myself on cutting to the chase when delivering basic information but these folks seemed to get paid by how many times they can repeat themselves though when the Ranger was finished and I began to follow him, Sharon asked if I understood what he said...I replied, "I can't remember or understand any thing he said". We laughed uncontrollably as we followed our pilot car while noticing the park was mostly empty but our ranger pointed out a site right next to an RV explaining this was the best site...yea but it's next to a generator running a TV. He left and we moved away from the RV camp to a sweet little bit of shoreline on Lake Martin. With the tent set up and my beautiful funny camper buddy and navigator extraordinaire, Sharon continued on doing the prep work for a late night dinner, I pulled out the old..very old Coleman propane stove which has worked fine up to...now. The old fire box suddenly developed more leaks than Watergate and just as volatile. So Sharon adjusted the meal to veggies alfresco. After our meal we quickly retired to our comfy Agnus (our tent's name) for a really wonderful sleep.

Since the stove was kaput our coffee needs went unanswered the next morning. The hot showers and beautiful mirror finish lake water was a weak substitute for a cup a Joe but soon our focus was to reach Savannah ASAP but along the way we had to replace the Coleman.