April 7-10, 2018 Open Pond Campground to Service Campground, Alabama

It was a gray rainy day today. Hung out inside for most of it. We went for a hike around the lake after the rain stopped. We also drove up to 4G hill to use the internet. I was hiking around the lake when we first got here and saw a tiny homemade sign that said 4G. I took my phone up there and there was  4G internet. We have very spotty and too slow internet in camp. I wanted to get my blog and some  photos up on face book before I got to far behind.

The sun came out today. It was only 69 degrees. We took a short hike half way to Blue Pond and back.

It is spring green. John hiking in green and John, Bullet and his dog Vinnie hiking ahead in longleaf pines and ferns. Bullet is staying at the campground with his wife Ann. They are from Wisconsin and travel for about 4 months a year, a month in the fall then 3 months in the winter down south.  Like us they like to go about 100 miles a week and stay for a week. The speed of a dysfunctional wagon train.

Darn, we missed the ‘Hippy’s Big Butt BBQ Bash in Monroeville yesterday.  I didn’t look at the schedule of events until today. Yellow and purple flowers in our campsite and a big pine cone.  One of these fell like a bomb by us yesterday when we were hiking. It could cause serious damage. I looked and found that 5 people a year are killed by falling pine cones . We saw the faded sign that said Natural Spring and took the side trail to this lovely spring coming out of the hillside. Bracken ferns and golden banner flowers.

A cauliflower fungus growing in the leaves, round green lichens in the leaves- the size of golf balls, a spider web on the lake jam packed with bugs. This spider is having a good day, young oak leaves. There are over 20 types of oak trees in the southeast, I can’t keep track of which one is which. Tiny white flowers and a great egret by the lake. It was clouded over this evening, but the lake was smooth so I took my boat out. The clouds were kind of cool.

The current masterpiece in progress. We moved to Service Campground on the Tombigbee River in  western Alabama. Here is our campsite.

Dinner in our backyard tonight. Sunset over the Tombigbee river. 

Our neighbors tonight are riders with Adventure Cycling.  They are on a 34 day trip to Niagara Falls. We have seen bike trips all over the country supported by these guys. We hiked the trails here in the park. John on the Pink Trail. 

John modestly covering up with the leaves from a bigleaf magnolia. The leaves are 25 inches long. When they flower the blooms are 11 inches across. Hope we see some blooms. Flowers in the campground. 

The trail we hiked on Alabama Black Belt nature and heritage trail. A purple spiderwort flower and two spider webs. The campground we are at is a Corp of Engineers campground adjacent to the Coffeeville lock and dam. The road to them is closed, but here is the sign.White violets, yellow senecio, white asters and false garlic flowers.