Georgia on my…Magnus? Day 9

 Thursday, February 19

Walking path we took every day: 

Palmettos

 

After the usual late start and early morning walk down to the boat ramp, we left Molly at home and went to see the Owens-Thomas House in Savannah. Finding it was challenging—I felt rushed and got turned around by the city directions, and I couldn’t get my bearings.  I had to ask Ed to navigate.

But the house and the tour was very interesting. Since it had been occupied by several families and remodeled a few times, it really needed the tour guide to explain to us what was new, what was old, and why all that was interesting. He did a great job.

Savannah 

In the house

 

After that I tried to navigate us down the waterfront and the old part of town, but I was having “halos” in my vision due to skipping lunch and not drinking any water. So I couldn’t navigate worth a tootle, and I didn’t want to make Ed wear himself out. If I’d been alone, I’d have stopped for a snack, sat down and gotten my bearings. But it wasn’t to be so. We headed back to City Market (which was a stupid array of small shops, not interesting) and the parking garage, and left. 

 

It was only later that I remembered that a whole part of my lifelong desire to see Savannah was to see the waterfront and the cotton warehouses and the ship landing sites. So all that was missed...another time. Or next time do Charleston which has some of the same sort of history.

            All I saw of the waterfront: 

 

Back at the Fort, Molly and I went for a walk again. We took a careful look at the trail map on the sign at trailhead, and it showed a big loop called The Magnolia Trail. So we went on it, and it started out with “blazes” in the form of yellow diamonds tacked onto trees. On we went, but soon there was a junction and the trail it joined was called something completely different, like Boy Scout trail or some such. A little while later it was called the Conservation trail or something else. And soon we had taken a loop and joined up with the exact same trail we’d taken the previous day when we got lost trying to find our way back to the road. At least at that point we knew where we were.

But there just weren’t any other trails except possibly one that went over to the primitive campground (I saw people back there so I didn’t go that way), and the so-called loop didn’t exist. At least by that name. And the yellow diamonds resumed at some point without rhyme or reason.

Weird. But at least we got a good long walk out of it.

Georgia on my…Magnus? Day 8

Wednesday, February 18

During our morning walk I noticed that the park was noisy on account of some construction going on somewhere over the lake. No big deal, just strange. I thought it was a quiet place.

We saw three very small deer.

 

Getting ready to leave, I noticed on the map that we're not far from Vidalia. Cool. I wish I’d known that—I might have cruised over to pick up a bag of sweet onions.

It was a nice morning for driving, warming up to 75 degrees but partly cloudy so we weren’t excessively hot. Ed spent most of the drive obsessing about other drivers pulling over "too soon" after passing. Oh well. I guess we have to all have something to annoy ourselves with. For me, it’s campers with outdoor lighting.

I did make these notes: Road to Savannah very flat. Without leaves very barren. Even the pines look forlorn.

We arrived at Fort McAllister State Historic Site, and it was pretty nice. Very nice, actually. We were in site 19, pull-thru, water and electric. The only fault I would find is that it’s only 30-amp. But that works.

The campground is a big loop containing multiple rows of sites: a row of full hookup sites, a couple of rows of water/electric sites, and then an area of tent sites. Molly and I were able to take our walks down to the boat ramp and fishing dock, and it was very pretty with lots of little palmettos and big magnolia trees, plus oaks and stuff. It was very strange to me to see magnolias growing wild! Where I come from, the only ones you see were planted in city neighborhoods.

 Boat ramp 

 

 

The fort had a big building but we didn't go in. 

Since we arrived so early and had the next two days reserved for trips to Savannah, Ed and I drove down to the Fort and walked through the museum and the displays. It was pretty cool. They’d reconstructed all the earthworks—bunkers and enclosures for heating iron hot and holes for cannons to shoot across the channel. It’s a pretty famous civil war battle site, I’m told.

 

I just love these trees 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reconstructed earth works, we walked all over. 

Didn't get to fire it!

 

Georgia on my…Magnus? Day 7

Tuesday, February 17

I got up early in the morning and took Molly on a long walk, back to the little one-duck pond. Our lonely blue-winged teal was still there.

So the drive for the day was to go from Little Tallapoosa to Little Ocmulgee. Georgia names, huh? That’s typical.

We bypassed Atlanta on some big interstate highway loop but the traffic was still horrid. It was a nice, sunny and cool day otherwise.

 Little Ocmulgee State Park was actually pretty large. The lake was low, though. I saw Greater Yellowlegs. Red shouldered hawk (I think.)  Killdeer. The sign said there were gators in the water. I noted that I had never seen so many little gray squirrels in my life. It was teeming with the cute little vermin.

As far as vegetation around the campsites goes, the place reminded me much of Garner State Park in central Texas, with the little evergreen oaks and a lot of dry gravel. Kind of bare and dry. Strange.

 

REVIEW: Little Ocmulgee SP

Not as fancy as expected but not bad, either

The web page was all about the lodge and golf course, so I didn’t even know where to check in for RV camping or where to get my tags. It turned out I was worried for nothing—if you already have paid reservations, you just proceed to your site and your tag is on the post, waiting for you. A host stopped by, too.

If you need to make reservations, I think you do that at the lodge office. We stopped there on the way in, and the guy seemed ready to make them if I’d needed.

The sites were really nice and big. Mostly all gravel; there may have been a paved site or two. We had site 40, a pull-thru site near the restroom. The utilities were all fine. We only stayed for one night, in February, so I can’t say much about how crowded it gets during the summer or how noisy it might be. When we were there, the few other campers were quiet and friendly. The traffic noise from outside the park was pretty bad, though.

We had a fire ring and a very old a decrepit picnic bench. The site right behind me was situated so that if we’d had neighbors there, we’d pretty much have heard every word they said. Very close, in other words. In fact, all of the sites were awfully close and the whole place very open. If you’re into privacy, try to get one of the back-in sites on the edge of the camping loop.

The lake was really low but there were a few Yellowlegs and other water birds around. I didn’t see any alligators. Sigh.

The facilities for kids seemed nice. Playgrounds and maybe a pool?? But of course that would be closed in February, so I’m not sure. 

Georgia on my…Magnus? Day 6

Monday, February 16

I got up thinking, Today is going to be my peaceful day. Hope it works.

It rained heavily overnight but the morning was somewhat clear. Molly and I had a good walk.
Finally saw robins. Lots of robins. Plus a red-headed woodpecker and a Brown Creeper.

This was our second day at Little Tallapoosa, the park with the many trails (and the really great bike trail.)  The plan for the day was to go to the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. We had a horrid drive getting there—the traffic on the Interstate was backed up, so we let Google do one of its faster routes—which turned out to be lots of winding around through city streets with lights, stop signs, and tons of traffic. There’s no way it was faster!

 

 

Parts of the aquarium were really, really nice. But it wasn’t as great as it was hyped up to be. It was laid out marquis style, with a big circle surrounded by “attractions” on two levels. Even with a map it made little sense. It was like a big, noisy fish-based amusement park. There seemed to be only two really huge tanks—one with mostly sharks and some fish; one with beluga whales--plus a little dolphin tank and one gorgeous coral reef display. But there weren’t very many of the little, single-species displays like they typically have in zoos or aquariums. There were a few and some of them held supremely cool creatures, but just not enough.

And so many people!  I’d accidentally scheduled the visit for President’s Day (a Monday holiday) and it was five times as crowded as usual.

We signed up for the dolphin show, then wandered around and saw every thing else in a couple of hours until time to get in line for it. It was nice, but not superbly magically amazing. Sigh

And we returned to Molly. Traffic worked better this time. Making up for leaving her alone in the motorhome for six hours, I put on jogging shoes and took her for a long jog on the bike trail. Hopefully she forgot all about her boring day of confinement. We started running into other people walking dogs on the trail, so we detoured off onto the walking paths and had an extra long walk after the jogging was done. It was lovely.

Georgia on my…Magnus? Day 5

 Sunday February 15 

Our drive for the day was headed to “Little Tallapoosa” county park. Man, these Georgia places have weird names!

We had rain for the whole trip as we cruised up and down through little mountains. It was mostly light rain but there was one smart shower. It didn’t slow us down, and it stopped raining when we arrived. Yippee!

I was surprised to discover it was a full hookup site.  (I really need to start writing down these details at  the time of making the reservation instead of waiting until months later when I do trip details planning. It’s strangely hard sometimes to find out that information months after the fact. But in this case, I think Georgia’s park reservation system was just flaky. Actually it's a county park.)

Molly and I went for a long meander on the little park trails, mostly concentrating on wide, paved bike trail. We got lost, but I suspected we’d been traveling in a big oval. And I was right!  We ended up back at the RV campground. Sweet.

And shortly after returning it came a serious shower. Didn’t see that coming!

 

There was a good bit of traffic noise in the distance. But the campground itself was very quiet. No radios or traffic or stuff like that. See my review later for details. Nothing much else happened, but I did a bit of work for Brock.

Review: Little Tallapoosa Park

Sweet campground! And bring the kids

This seemed like an itty bitty little campground until I went walking around. The full-hookup area where we were had a couple of loops and plenty of lovely, large sites. I’d been told to “check in and choose any yellow site,” and that worked fine. I’d reserved a site and paid a deposit, asking for a full hookup site for a 35’ RV. And that’s exactly what the yellow sites were. The green ones were for smaller RVs and there were some  tent sites mixed in, too.  All this was explained by the nice lady at the front gate who gave us our tags.

There were two other camping loops, one with RV and smaller trailer sites, water/electric only, and one for tent campers. It would be a lovely place to tent camp—the sites were large and pretty private, under huge pine trees for  shade.

We chose pull-thru site 6. The pad was asphalt, it was easy to get in and out, and the utilities worked just fine. It was more than long enough for us. The utilities were at the back of the site, so we unhooked our toad and parked it in front, which let us put the motorhome at the very back where it would be close to the sewer outlet.

There is a lovely, long bike trail next to the campground, plus lots of little walking paths winding in and out through the woods. All perfectly maintained. And there’s a basketball area, a splash pad and a couple of playgrounds for the kiddies. Plus a tiny little pond, containing a lone blue-winged teal.  They had signs displaying local children’s poetry posted on the walking path around it. Nice!

If it had only had a dog park I’d have called it perfect.

Georgia on my…Magnus? Day 4

Saturday February 14

This was our second day at Forkland. I made notes that the place was extremely quiet and peaceful except for maybe a few dogs barking across the river. And campers. And birds. And a few gunshots now and then. Palmettos.

There were lots of huge trees to enjoy and along with that, tons of squirrels for Molly to chase.  The only trails were the tiny network I mentioned before, starting just beside the park entrance station. Best I could tell, Molly and walked them all in well under an hour. But there were nice and had lots of lake views, so I won’t complain.

We ended the day on a bad note. The entrees we had at the restaurant (River City Soul) were good but the sides were awful and I couldn’t communicate with the waitress.  The menu clearly stated that my entrée came with a side and a salad, but for some reason she thought that I didn’t want the salad. Even though I specifically requested honey-mustard dressing. But when she brought out Ed’s salad, I saw that I didn’t like the looks of it enough to ask for mine. The food took 25 or more minutes to come. And even though it had “soul” in the name, the food was pure American crap. A shame. Another time, when we come here, we’ll do The Red Barn--it was packed.

Apparently someone likes carving statues.

 

Georgia on my…Magnus? Day 3

Friday, February 13

Leaving Askew Landing:

We had a lovely boring drive. Jackson sucked—it was very rough going through there—but it didn't last long.  Then I made a note, “Getting awful hilly here at Meridian,  Mississippi.” I’m not sure why but I suspect I thought that Mississippi was universally flat.

We arrived at Forkland Campground (see review below.) I jogged for 45 minutes but stopped in the middle to walk a trail.  It was supposed to be .7 mile but there were at least 11 benches along the route. So does that mean there was a bench every 1/20 of a mile?  I don’t know, but it was nice. There were lots of offshoots, too, that I may get to take.

Birds seen: Kingfisher. Hermit thrush, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Pileated Woodpecker; butterbutts, chickadees. Some species of cormorant. Blue birds, titmice--do titmice sound different all over the place?!?  It sure seems like they do. Yellow-bellied sapsucker.
Barred owl on the ground--so cool. I apologized much for disturbing its hunting.
Pelicans, at least 45 or 50. Heading vaguely north.

I finished the day with an awesome star and planet display. I say a shooting star!

Review: Forkland Campground

One of the nicest little COE campgrounds I’ve ever seen

The place was smallish but very nice. The gate wasn’t manned (it was February) but a quick call to  the host on duty got me my paperwork and I was all set. There were no issues with checking in early at 2pm; the official check-in was 4pm but the website indicated you were allowed to check in early if your site was empty. Which is not true of all COE parks.

But on a Friday in February, Forkland was nearly empty. The row of sites we were in ran alongside the river (lake?), but there was another loop of sites away from the lake. There were a few campers grouped up near the front, where there were more pull-thru sites, and about six in the back-in sites near us. Some of the back-in sites were extremely long—room for an RV, a vehicle, and even a boat or two. Ours was plenty long for the 35’ motorhome and toad. We only unhooked because it was back-in and we were planning to go out to eat.

The pad was concrete; the living area fine pea gravel. Large  picnic table.  All very nice and surprisingly tidy.  Which is unusual for a COE park; even the boat ramp area was clean. Our utilities—water and 50-amp electricity---worked fine. The dump station on the way out was easy to use.  And the bathroom was immaculate—cleaner than mine at home.

Our site 177 backed up to the lake and had a decent view of it through the trees. That might not be true in the summer, though. Some of the others sites had more clear space on the lake side. In particular sites 11 and 20 were great. We had an easy walk down the steep bank to the lake; a few of the other sites had staircases in varying states of repair. A person could tie up their boat down there and camp on the hill overlooking it.

There was even a small group of walking trails by the entrance gate.  My dog and I walked about a mile on various trails. Since the park is small, that may be all there is, so don’t go there for major hiking adventures.  But it was enough for us.

 We ate at River City Soul in Demopolis. The steak and fried catfish were as good as everybody says; the bread was nice; but the side dishes were atrocious. The wait time for our food to come was really long--25 minutes, maybe. I was thinking there might have been some side dishes that weren’t on the online menu, like black-eye peas or greens or such, but no. I wished we’d chosen The Red Barn instead; there were a whole lot of cars there when we went by. Oh, well.