Oct 31, 2015 Alabama

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Happy Halloween from Alabama

45 degrees this morning.

After a quick stop at Dunkin’ Donuts,  we drove through nearby Chicamaugua National Military Park.   The Civil War battlefield was dotted with canons, wooden fences, and quite a few browsing deer.

We are heading to Little River Falls Nature Preserve which is farther still down Lookout Mountain.  Cloudy but dry, we stop at DeSoto State Park for a map and some information, then head to Little River Falls where we park and walk a bit.

Nice falls.  This area is where the Cherokees crossed the Little River on their Trail of Tears westward march to Oklahoma.

The Little River creates a 550’ canyon, one of the largest east of the Mississippi and Rim Trail Parkway has been created to travel alongside, with multiple scenic pull-outs.  We stop at most of them, along with a few other vehicles.

Mushroom rock, in the center of the Rim Trail Road

From here we are headed further south to Talladega National Forest and a campground there called Coleman Lake.  No one would ever accidentally stumble across this place, as it is quite remote!  But we eventually find it and find a beautiful campsite, lightly populated, with electricity, water and hot showers – all for a $10 a night.  Bingo! 

The camp hosts stop by – wonderful friendly local folks who fill us in on a few items, like the weather siren that will sound in case of dangerous weather (not expected).  We collect wood and Greg chops and splits it.  After showers, we take the walk around the lake, about 2 miles. The lake is placid, with a small beach and picnic area, no doubt popular in Summer, but deserted today.

Greg gets the fire going and we wait a while till there are good coals to toss in some foil-wrapped potatoes. Some of the wood we gathered puts off a green flame...will have to research to find out what this means, as we haven't seen it before.  We mess with some sparklers in the fire, looking for but not finding interesting photo ops.

Dinner is pulled-pork stuffed potatoes and is quite good! We sit and enjoy the fire till about 8:00 when it begins to rain.  Glad we had the whole day to enjoy outdoors!  We break out the Cribbage board for a bit before reading and saying good-night.