The drive from Mountain View, Arkansas to Double Springs, Alabama is a fairly long one in terms of travel time.  We headed out about 9am on Sunday morning to begin the drive.  We are finally starting to head home, heading southeast to eventually return to Florida. But we have a few more fun filled days before that happens!  The Google map says this drive is 352 miles to get to our campsite in William Bankhead National Forest outside of the town of Double Springs in Alabama.

We headed out taking Highway 14 east/25 north for a good number of miles - heading towards Memphis, Tennessee.  It's Sunday, so some of the smaller towns don't have anything open at this time.  We stopped for gas in a small town called Newport, population 4000.  The store wasn't open, but the gas pumps were on - so we took a quick potty break and continued on our path.

How did I find this place?  Honestly, I was looking at the route that Google was sending us to get home first.  Then I was looking at the number of miles we were driving.  I kind of appeared to be in the middle of nowhere. Go figure.  So, I started searching around and finally found a place that looked interesting.  Then checked out the campground and said that looks like a winner!

This was quite a drive to get from Arkansas back to northern Alabama.  What did I see along that path?

Cotton Fields.....

Farm equipment.....

Water towers (man, every town has one within viewing distance of the road we were on)

Detour sign ....hmmm, guess we are probably taking the long way to get across the Mississippi River.

Welcome to Tennessee? Um, Memphis? I guess I had no clue how we were getting from Arkansas back to Alabama.

Bass Pro has a big pyramid building by the interstate in Memphis.

Oh, and now we are in Alabama.  We should be getting closer to our destination now.

Eventually we got off the interstate system and had some more country roads getting to our destination.  One of those roads where you really don't know what's on the other side?  This doesn't happen much in Florida, so it's still weird to me to have the road appear to 'end'.

By this time in our trip, I had done no planning on what we might want to do while we stayed here.  This was totally not started because of all the hurricanes and loss of power the week prior to our trip.  We arrived and got our paperwork (there was no ranger at the check in station).  When we went to what was supposed to be our campsite, well, someone was in it.  Yes, this again (just like Cloud 9 in Hot Springs).  So luckily, we had cell service (We have Verizon) and I called the number posted at the ranger station.  She got a hold of the camp host.  And we ended up moving from campsite #6 to #10.  There were a lot of really nice campsites that were vacant, but we took the closest one to the one we had actually reserved.

I wanted to catch the sunset, so we did quick setup, let the dogs go potty and then tried to scramble to the lake view and catch the sunset.

Well, it was pretty!  But to many dog potty stops and we didn't make it before the sun went behind the trees.  Oh well, we have 2 more nights to try this again.

This area is really dark at night - and the stars were great.  But, the first night I was to tired to stay up and try to capture any photos, so I just looked at the skies and said "Wow"!

The next morning, we didn't have any real plans, so first we cooked breakfast while the dogs hung out outside.

Corinth Recreation Area

Our campsite is located in the Yellow Hammer area of the National Forest.  Within that, we are in the Corinth Recreation Area.  First up, let's take a look around the area that we are actually staying at just in case there might be something right here that we might want to check out today or tomorrow.  The trees were really beautiful - some were changing colors, others not yet.

We wondered down near where one of the boat ramps is located.

We noticed that the water levels area really low.  Later in our trip we found out from on of the other campers that they lower the level of this lake in the winter months - it is dam controlled.  It's a really large lake with lots of 'fingers' coming off of it.  The maple trees did have red leaves.

Just hanging out - sometimes we did stop to just lay around.

The dogs really liked the 'sandy beach' which is actually the bottom of the lake exposed due to low water levels.

Per the website for this area:

The Corinth Recreation Area is a state-of-the art campground located on the on the shores of the upper part of Lewis Smith Lake in Winston County. Initially built in the 1960s and renovated in 1998 it offers facilities for individual and group camping, picnicking, swimming, and boat launching. 

We stayed in the Yellow Hammer section of the campground.  After driving around and looking at the two areas, I found that the area we choose seems to be a little prettier.  Plus, this area is very close to the lake and some of the camp sites actually have a view of the lake.  Access to the lake requires you to walk or drive down to other areas to get to the water.

There are several bath houses in the campground.  The one that I used is nice, clean and everything (bathrooms and showers) were functional!  Always a plus.  I didn't do laundry here so not sure whether or not they have those facilities.  Some of the camp sites are drive through and some are really big!  To think we could have chosen one of those.....oh well.

Natural Bridge Recreation Area

So, next up I found an area that looked like it would have some hiking that we could do with the dogs.  It is within the National Forest and is called the Natural Bridge Recreation Area.

We are the only ones here - no other cars around.  So we parked, tried to find a map (nope).  They did have an outhouse (at least this one isn't on wheels!).

So, we found the trail and started walking.

It's pretty.  The trail is small stones or gravel - so at least we know that we are on the right path.

I have no idea what Jim is doing, but Ollie is looking straight at me - Rue is off somewhere else.  Abby is with me, so she isn't in this photo.

Ok - let's get goofy!  These leaves are in the area of a foot long!

Natural Bridge

Long ago, this area was a shallow sea that deposited sands and other sediments. These deposits formed the sandstone rocks you see around you and limestone and shale in other areas of the forest. During that time, the tectonic plates that comprise today’s North America and Africa collided, causing the formation of the Appalachian Mountains and the rise of the Appalachian Plateau.  Here in the Southern Appalachians, the plateau known as the Cumberland Plateau.

As precipitation fell and vegetation grew, the rocks broke down and formed soil. Because some stones weather faster than others, canyons, rock outcrops, overhangs (rockhouses), gladed, and natural bridges were formed. The result is the landscape you see today – the Black Warrior Mountains.  The ridges are the remaining flat plateau land, while the natural erosion of rock forms everything else.

Natural bridges are stone archways spanning an “erosion valley” like a stream bed. Water flowing through the feature erodes the rock creating a natural “bridge” over the erosion valley. While a water source forms natural bridges they do not always continue to have water flowing beneath them.

The above is from the sign outside of this area.

We eventually ended up back where we had parked the truck - so this trail is a loop.  It is a nice walk and isn't very long.  Probably took us about 30 minutes or so to walk, but it's nice and quiet here - nothing else around anywhere!

Longest Natural Bridge - East of the Rockies!

We noticed this particular 'attraction' while we were driving to our campsite the day before.  This park opened in 1954. Since we now knew what a natural bridge was, and it looked like a nice place to hike - we decided to back track to this place and see what it was all about.  First, since it is 'an attraction' it does have a fee to go do the hike.  Second, the attraction is dog friendly - so I paid the entrance fee and we started hiking.

We started off on the hike - and soon we got to the "Indian Face".

Then we continued a short walk and found this natural bridge.

Can you tell that Jim is standing just outside of the frame?  Abby is giving a side ways glance to see what exactly it is she should be doing.....

The old church

This old church is located very close to the campground area.  It appears to still be in use as I looked inside the windows, but unfortunately it was locked so I couldn't go inside and look around (take photos, whatever).

Night Skies

The night skies here do not have any issues with light pollution!  The only light pollution is from your neighbors camping in the various sites.  I decided to take the camera out and take a few photographs without leaving our campsite (it's really dark here and Jim wasn't up to going down to the lake).

Our little guy with some of the lights on.  The white lights are obviously from inside the camper.  The green light, wow, who knew it was 'so bright'.  It is coming from the gadget that we put on the electric hookup to make sure that all is good for the camper (meaning, no shorts, issues with the electric hookup).

Double Springs Veterinary Clinic

 This evening, Ollie started having 'potty troubles'.  At first, I just thought she needed to go potty - so I put the leash on her and took her out.  Thankfully there was no wildlife out at the time because that would have been a totally new and not so good experience.  A few hours later, Ollie did the potty dance again and woke me up.  This time I took a flashlight with me to see what might be going on.  Ugh, looks like Ollie has a UTI - we got to find a vet.

It was good that we had cell phone service - and actually Verizon service here was very good.  I looked up to find the closest vet - 20 minutes away in Double Springs (in the town, not the forest we were in).  We decided the next morning to drive over to the clinic and see if they could take Ollie in. 

Our luck, the decided to repave the main road into this campground and recreation area.  So we had to take a dirt road. We did get a little lost on the dirt roads.

The horses weren't about to tell us which way to go....and coming back was even trickier but we did finally make it back to our campsite.

It hasn't rained here in a while.  The dirt was dirty!  And my white truck was caked with dirt all over it - don't touch it, you'll be really dirty if you do.  They don't want you to wash your vehicle at the campground.... but I wonder if anyone would have really noticed - there isn't any staff there and the campground host was gone for the afternoon.... but we didn't.

The vet was not too busy (unlike here in Tampa) and within a few minutes they were able to take us in.  I've been through this before with other animals, so I knew to capture some of the doggie urine and bring the sample in with me.  Good to have 'throw away tupperware' containers with you :) The vet confirmed Ollie had a UTI, gave me the medication to make her get better.  Also, advised that Ollie might appreciate a 'day of rest'.  So we grabbed some fast food on the way back to the campground.  

The rest of the day we relaxed and then eventually did walk some of the trails at Corinth Recreation Area which was nice.  Abby got to play in the water a bit and we enjoyed the time not being too busy.

Ollie made a complete recovery by the time we got home.

The Sunset

So, each night I wanted to go try and capture the sunset over the lake.  The first day, we just missed the sun going behind the trees, but the colors from the clouds were good so we took photographs.  The second day, we started out a little earlier, but the darn dogs went potty to much and dang it if the sun didn't disappear behind the trees before we got there again!  Apparently, the people that had the campsite right next to the lake view noticed our attempts to get the sunset!  As we headed back to our campsite, we stopped to talk with them for a few minutes.  They said, you need to try and be there by 5pm.  So, the third day, we got there at 5pm and of course we had to wait for the sun to set - we were at least 15 minutes to early. But, unfortunately, there were not clouds for this sunset, so it wasn't as pretty.  Another group of people from another campsite showed up and we spent a good amount of time talking with them before heading back to our campsite.

Our Campsite

#10 in Yellow Hammer area of the campgrounds

The campgrounds - what I liked:

1. The campground itself was very pretty - lots of trees, good size sites
2. Water (that dripped a bit), electric, and sewer hookups at the site
3. Trails within the campground
4. Bath houses were clean and functional.  They have several bath houses in the yellow hammer section of the campground
5. Very little light pollution
6. Very little noise overall
7. Remote from town(s)

The campgrounds - what I didn't like:

1. One thing I did not like - we had to do the camp site shuffle again.  What would have happened if there wasn't another site available?
2. The ranger was not there so you couldn't purchase any ice, firewood, etc nor could you ask about 'things to do' in the area

Overall, our experience was good, and I would return to this campground if I were in this area of the country in the future.

For more photographs from this campground stop, click here.