Cheaha State Park

January 17-18, 2009

We spent the week organizing and buying things for the camper. We made our yearly trip to Wal-Mart and walked away upset as always at the lesser than quality items that they sell and at the prices they sell the crap for this year!!!! We did buy some side mirror extensions and a small television from Amazon.com and it still continues to impress me how easy and helpful Amazon is when buying SOME items! We go next day delivery on those two items for $3.99 per item and saved over $70 on the TV versus local store prices. Not everything is great off of Amazon (you still have to research stuff extensively and go look at some items at stores to check quality) but these two items will work out great!

We watched the weather all week and Thursday-Friday was going to be the coldest days of the year, but things looked a bit warmer on Saturday-Sunday, so we decided to go for it. We added a small electric space heater to our gear in the camper so we could save on propane. We also turned the electric heater on in the camper when it was extremely cold at home (Thursday and Friday) so we could help in keeping the pipes from freezing. Saturday morning Joel, Jessica, and Dusty came over and we all loaded up/hooked up the camper and we headed out to Cheaha. We arrived around noon (under 2 hour drive) and set up camp. We found a great site with a older pine tree that was split and had fallen that was loaded with good kindling. It was one of those days when the sun was not going to come out and it feels like 30 minutes before dusk all day long. With the cold, overcast, and sleety mist we were experiencing, we opted not to hike so we started a great fire and just chilled around the campsite. Joel and I took the axe and attempted to chop down a semi-fallen tree. Only, it did not fall and wound up getting hung up and angled towards a fall of destruction which required constant monitoring when sitting around the campsite. It also required movement of the truck. Every windy gust kept us on alert. We had sandwiches for lunch and snacked on home made trail mix all day (Note: don't cook raisins with the trail mix in the oven!). For dinner we had hot dogs, chili, kraut, and chips. We sat around the fire off and on all night as the rain, sleet, and wind drove us in the camper some. Eventually, we all fell asleep watching a movie in the camper.

The weekend showed us that the camper did fine holding two couples, a baby, and two dogs (Dusty and Bo; Star was put up on doggy vacation in the kennel). We all slept great and got up had breakfast, loaded up, and took down everything. On the way out we all stopped at the highest point in Alabama and checked out the top of the observation tower. Sunday afternoon was sunny and beautiful!! We left from Cheaha around 2:00 and got home around 3:30 with a gout attack hitting me hard.

Weather: 30-35 degrees, windy, sleet, rain, overcast until we left

Campground notes: sites are tight, if it were crowded here then there would have been unpleasantly close neighbors; water, power, and on-site sewage (this was convenient)

Lessons learned: be more careful backing up (cracked taillight cover on the site number sign), when standing up from bed watch head (after multiple head bangs)

Things to buy: small step ladder, level blocks, short hose and splitter for connection to water

Until we set out again...