SWEET HOME ALABAMA.
Day 64 – We’ve never camped in Alabama before, just driven through the southern part of the State going from Georgia to Mississippi to Louisiana. Now we get to add a colored sticker to the U.S. Map that shows all the States we’ve camped in. Today we’ll see a bit more of AL.
Added Aalabama
It was 51 degrees this morning at 6:30 a.m., quite cloudy & some wind, making it feel colder than that. Not the perfect day for the fishermen and bow & arrow competitors. The campground was quiet with everyone gone since early this morning. Not the perfect day for our Wildlife Refuge drive either. So we decided to go to the Wildlife Refuge in the afternoon after lunch and run some errands in Eufaula in the morning.
First we went into Eufaula looking for a plumbing place Rob found on the computer. (He’s playing Mr. Fix-It Plumber today.) After driving around a bit and therefore getting to see a little more of this City, we found the store & he got the parts he was looking for. We also had to mail a couple of items, so we found the post office. We went south next & then crossed the River to Georgia heading north, visiting several Army Corps of Engineers campgrounds to see what they had to offer. (Previously we’d been impressed with the Corps’ campgrounds, but these weren’t special. They were very crowded with the campsites close together. They are generally a little cheaper than State Parks & the sites are usually well situated, but the ones we saw today were not at all what we’d expected.) If we come back to this area again, and we probably will, we’d stay again at the campground we are currently at, even though it’s also more crowded than we’re used to. We also drove through all of our current campground, checking it out. It’s quite large with many different facilities, which we assume is why it’s called a “resort”. In addition to the four campground loops, each with 48 campsites, there are 22 cabins, a laundromat, several boat launches, boat storage slips, hiking & biking trails, lakeside cottages, tennis courts, a Lodge with rooms to rent & a restaurant, swimming pools, etc. We’ve found this part of Alabama to be hilly, reminding us more of Tennessee; the areas we’ve been to in Georgia were flat. So far, Alabama is more different than Georgia than we expected. But out next stop will be in Alabama, also, this time northern AL, so we’ll see what we find there.
Back to the RV for lunch, then we went a couple of miles to the Eufaula National Wildlife Refuge. The Visitor’s Center & Headquarters were closed on the weekend, but the NWR Wildlife Drive was open. We spent the entire afternoon driving the various roads throughout the Refuge. The high today was only 56 degrees & the sun never came out, but we still saw a bunch of birds (but no alligators). We only encountered a few other people there & they were going out fishing. (Signs we’ve seen say that “Eufaula is the Bass Capital of the World”. We have seen that claim made by other places, too, LOL.)
Click on any picture below to see a slideshow.
Taken from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services Eufaula National Wildlife Refuge Wildlife Drive brochure, January 2010: “The Eufaula National Wildlife Refuge encompasses 11,184 acres. The Refuge is home to almost 300 species of birds, 40 mammal species, and many more amphibians, reptiles & fishes. The major habitat types you may encounter include about 2,700 acres of woodlands; 300 acres of agricultural croplands; several hundred acres of old fields – former agricultural fields with early successional stages of vegetation which are important because they provide cover year-round; 220 acres of warm-season grasslands; edges (the term “edge” means those transitional zones between different habitat types – these serve as highways for movement, escape cover from danger, or nesting, feeding, and loafing areas); approximately 4,000 acres of open water, and about 3,000 acres of marsh lands. Each of these provide the food, cover, and protection for a diversity of animal species.”
Tomorrow we are driving through Alabama to the north part of the State near its border with Tennessee, another area that’ll be new to us. Because it won’t be the weekend, we should be able to get a good campsite at our campground of choice, Joe Wheeler Resort State Park, (another one of these AL “resort” Parks), on Wheeler Lake, and not too far from Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge, with its many roads for wildlife viewing. We hope they’re not flooded from recent storms……
Lakepoint Resort State Park: 104 Lakepoint Drive, Eufaula, AL 36027-9202; Marina/Lake/Campground Information (334) 687-6026; Park Office (334) 687-6676; online reservations 1-800-alapark.com; LakePoint.StPk@dcnr.alabama.gov. This is a large (1,220-acre) Park on the Alabama-Georgia border line, on the beautiful 45,200-acre Lake Eufaula. There are four campground loops, each with 48 campsites. There is also a Lodge with a restaurant, lake-side cottages, cabins in the woods, tennis courts, swimming pools, boat launches, laundromat, and hiking/biking trails. The Park is located close to the city of Eufaula, AL with its stores, restaurants, gas stations, and fast food places, The Park is adjacent to the Eufaula National Wildlife Refuge. We visited in mid-March, supposedly winter, and there weren’t many open campsites. Therefore, reservations are recommended. (Although it turned out that we were stopping by during two major sporting events.) We were assigned Clark Loop Site #48. a good campsite with water & electrical hook-ups – dump stations were nearby. We had a water view. All water edge sites were already taken. We drove through the campgrounds and found that Clark Loop was the best, sites #44, 42, 48, 20, and 52, in that order. The Deer Court Loop was full hook-ups & row after row of RV’s. Barbour Loop was not open officially although there was one tent camper there – that Loop had no water access but was acceptable, maybe site #58 as a last alternative. And Alabama Loop was behind a gate & being used for boat & RV storage at this time. We paid $27.40 per night. Our campsite worked out fine this time, but if noisy people had been next to and across from us, it would’ve been a problem. Reservations might be a good thing next time, and not coming on a weekend when there’s special events.