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Mother Nature’s
Fury
We left Betty’s
and continued heading east along I-10. The game plan was to drop
down and follow the coastal rout across
Mississippi but some of the
bridges are still out due to hurricane Katrina. We dropped south
to spend the night in Biloxi,
Mississippi and were totally awestruck at the
devastation incurred by the hurricane. Most of the debris has been
removed, but the reconstruction will be a long time coming. We
didn’t even think to take any pictures but you have all seen them on the evening
news. Pictures just can’t even come close to revealing the extent
of the destruction – it is unbelievable what force Mother Nature can
unleash.
A
Pleasant Surprise Awaits
After
spending the night in Biloxi we
headed for Rainbow Plantation in Summerdale,
Alabama, another
Escapees
Park. While checking in
Judy said, “That looks like Norm and Linda Payne’s car!” and to our surprise it
was. They had decided to head south rather than east to
Knoxville since the weather in that
area had turned cold. It was good to see them and spend some more
time with them.
While in
Alabama we just had to wade in the
water so we headed to Gulf
Shores to spend the day.
Being the end of October we practically had the whole beach to ourselves
since most of the tourists had gone home for the winter. Ah, how
great to spend the day in shorts and sandals; to us northerners the water was
nice and warm. We drove out the peninsula toward
Fort
Morgan. The peninsula
is pretty much a sandbar and it is amazing to see all of the rebuilding that is
taking place after hurricane Ivan swept through here in September of
2004. We can’t believe that people would build houses on the sand
even if they are putting them up on stilts, it just seems crazy to us.
We only spent
two days in Alabama’s coastal area
but will definitely return to spend more time. Rainbow
Plantation is a nicely laid out
campground designed with the fulltimer in mind. They have
reasonable rates and would make a nice “home base” campground for us in the
future.
 
The
Red Neck Campground
Another change
to our plans was to travel onto
Georgia rather
than heading directly back to
Nashville so we drove to
Montgomery,
Alabama and then headed east toward
Atlanta. We stayed
over night in a Passport America campground in
Alabama just along the
Alabama /
Georgia
border. As we drove into this campground the only thing that we
could think of is, “You gotta be kidding me”!!!
This was
definitely a “Red Neck” campground with junk tractors parked out front by the
entrance and junk grills stacked all around the office/store which in itself was
pretty run down. They did have level full hook-up sites with cable
TV (WIFI was available on the picnic table in front of the run down
facilities). Our site was in a gravel pit and we had a lovely view
of two more junk tractors from our living room window. However,
the owners were very nice people (if you could understand their backwoods
southern accent) and this turned out to be a very pleasant experience; it just
goes to show you that you can’t judge a book by its cover. We are
slowly learning to get over our “snobbish” ways which is allowing us to become
more open to different cultures and lifestyles. After all, this is
what memories are made of; we will never forget our “Red Neck Campground”
experience.
A
Mountain Top Experience
One of life’s
pleasures when we lived in Cartersville,
Georgia was our daily walks
on Red
Top
Mountain. When we
returned to Michigan in September
of 2004 we thought we would never walk those hiking trails again.
We had two reasons for wanting to return to the peach state.
One was to meet up with some old friends and the other was to “walk the
mountain”.
It was
wonderful to walk on our old hiking trails once again. The weather
had turned a little cooler but the trail had remained exactly the same as we
remember. We spent an hour hiking through the woods while holding
hands and sipping our water along the way. We only walked the
three mile trail; however, being on the side of a mountain the trail keeps going
up and down hill (Remember Judy, the hills are your friend) and it took a little
more than an hour (we used to walk it in fifty minutes.
That evening we
went out to dinner at the Appalachian Grill with our friends, Jay and Ann Camp;
this is our favorite restaurant in Cartersville. It was fun seeing
them again and we had a great meal together. We look forward to
returning to that area many more times as we travel (gotta hike our ol’ friend
the mountain again – we miss him (or her)). We said good bye to
our old stomping grounds and headed for
Nashville,
Tennessee where will begin workamping on
November 6th.
 
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