Magnus to Mass., with Jamestown Jaunt, Day 26

Sunday, August 31 

Note at the time: People in Tennessee are fat and they drive instead of walking. It’s a pretty place nonetheless.

Ed backed out of the spot. It was scary, but not as bad as I anticipated.  He was able to back straight, between the trees, and go uphill beside the playground. And from there just head straight out, along the road in front of our site. I watched carefully, and no scraping occurred.

On to Chickasaw State Park near Jackson, Tennessee. During the drive I noted that the trees are just beginning to turn in the hills of Tennessee. Lots of brown and yellow breaking up the late days of green. Other than that, I noted that the drive was not very memorable but somehow it took an hour longer than I’d planned. It took us a while to back out of our campsite and to dump and hook up the Jeep (none of this included in the drive time.) 

And then we had a small adventure at a rest area. There were no spots free, so Ed pulled in behind a pickup truck with a U-Haul. We didn’t really fit there, but it was close enough.  But when we were ready to leave, the U-Haul driver was still working on his load. So Ed backed backed up the Motorhome with me sitting in the jeep and holding the steering wheel straight so that it didn’t jackknife. With the engine off, that was hard.

Two cars came into the rest area while we were performing the maneuver, but too bad for them. They just had to wait—a punishment for being so stupid as to pull into the “Trucks” side of the rest area instead of the “Cars” side.  On the way out, we noticed that there was a car taking up one of the truck parking slots further down. But not a single other one of the truck spots was empty.  Makes you wish that a trucker would come along and just kind of push the car out of the way.

The rest of the drive was okay. But I have to add a note—Chickasaw State Park is 30 minutes off the interstate to the south of it, which is way too far for an overnight stop on the way home after a long trip.  Tomorrow we won’t have to go all the way back north to hit the Interstate—Memphis is due west of us—but we’ll still have a half-hour or so on secondary roads. Probably two-lane, too.

Other than the drive, I kind of liked the place. It was really pretty. The RV camping loop kind of sucks—the sites are spaced out okay but there’s nothing to see except your neighbors opposite.  There’s a sidewalk behind our site which leads to the bathroom, which was nice.  But the place was pretty much completely full of campers on this Labor Day weekend.  I’d booked a pull-thru site but somehow put it down as back-in on the trip plan, so we unhooked and re-hooked the Jeep unnecessarily. No big deal but a stupid waste of time.

Also we couldn’t find the check-in station, so before re-hooking the Jeep I decided to drive around and figure out where it was. Ed was on the top of the ladder putting up the starlink, Molly was tied up to a pole, and I had just gotten into the Jeep and started to pull away when I heard dogs barking. Molly was one of them. I backed up and ran around only to find the situation under control—the neighbor opposite us had a dog who’d pulled his leash and ran over to have it out with the intruder. Ed had descended the ladder and the neighbor had scurried their fat butt over; between the two of them, they’d separated the dogs. I don’t think anyone got bitten but if they did, I hope it was the neighbor dog’s owner.

So I resumed my journey, only to come up behind a park ranger truck circling the campground. I followed, intending to ask them where to check-in, only to find them stopping at our site. They were delivering the tags for people coming in that day.  So I didn’t have to go anywhere after all.

Too bad, though. Later when Ed and I took a walk to find the bathroom and give Molly some exercise, I couldn’t figure out how to get to the lake. So instead we took a trail up to an old water tower hidden in the woods. Interesting and I saw a pine warbler, but we didn’t get to see the lake or get a trail map. Later when I took Molly for a short jog, I went the opposite direction and found the lake about 15 minutes away. There was a walkway that appeared to go all around it, too. But I didn’t get time to take it.

And I hope that’s all the adventure for the day. Although later I took a second walk, trying to get a picture of the flycatchers on the wire. Merlin had flagged a yellow-throated flycatcher, which didn’t match the ones I was seeing. But try as I might, I couldn’t figure out what they were.

Unknown flycatcher, darn it!

 

To sum up, Chickasaw has asphalt sites, nice spacing. Full hookup. Not exactly “charming” but more than adequate. The rest of the park was really nice, with tennis courts, swimming area in the lake, fishing, horses, bats flying around the horse pasture in the evening, lots of trails.  There was a lot of noise both in our camping loop and over across the lake in the other camping loop, but it was a weekend and that’s to be expected.

The bathroom shower was really nice. There were two in the ladies room.  In both cases the water from the shower got your shoes wet, but the rest of the stuff stayed dry. And the water was hot with good force.

So, I’d say yes to a return trip, but only if our route takes us this far away from I-40. Maybe if we’re headed to northern Alabama or something.