Hungry Mother State Park

After losing power, we had to stop at a place with electrical power to fully charge the batteries. For some reason Hungry Mother State Park is pretty expensive, but they did have power at the campsites. Plus, wifi was available at the campsite, which is unusual for state parks.

The legend is that Molly Marley and her child had escaped after being captured by Indians. They wandered through wilderness eating berries. Molly finally collapsed, but her child followed a creek to find help. The only thing the child could say was “Hungry Mother”. A search party found Molly dead. The mountain is now named “Molly’s Knob” and the stream is “Hungry Mother Creek”.

I did a short hike in the morning. What this picture doesn't show is that you camp under an electric line that buzzes all the time.  Not exactly getting back to nature!

By the way, we are in West Virginia now staying with John's sister Sue. And we're up-to-date (finally!!) on the blog.

Break Down!

When we were in this area last year, our air conditioner failed. This time the power converter broke. An RV has 2 types of power required. The 120 V comes from being plugged in or from the generator. It runs the outlets, TV, microwave, and refrigerator (the refrigerator also runs on propane and 12V). The 12 V comes either from storage batteries or from 120V thru the power converter. It runs the lights, refrigerator controls, the heat controls and fans, the hot water tank controls, the DVD/radio, and the slides for the RV. When the converter failed and the storage batteries were used up, we had no lights, no refrigerator, no heat, no hot water, no DVD/radio, and no way to bring the slides in on the RV. The slides, by the way, are sections of the RV that slide out to give us more room when we’re camping.  The bed and the couch slide out in our RV.

We were able to use ice from the freezer to keep the refrigerator stuff cold for a couple of days. We used flashlights. We could actually run the TV and a portable DVD player using 120 V at the campground. Without hot water, we used the showers at the campground and let the dishes go for a couple of days. The slides had to be manually run in. Those were a major pain for John.

Fortunately, we found a great place on the way to the next camping ground that had the spare part we needed. They installed it quickly. Life in an RV is always an adventure!

Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area

The last time we visited here it rained most of the time.  This time we had perfect hiking weather and the leaves were just starting to change. There is a hike here that is listed as one of the top hikes in the U.S. called Honey Creek Loop. We had to try it.

First, you have to drive one hour from the campground to get to the trailhead. That involves hairpin turns and gravel roads. We saw deer and a turtle on the way. If you don’t have it typed into your GPS and a long explanation from the ranger, I’m not sure if you can find the trailhead.

The hike is difficult.  They say you need an hour for every mile and “they” are right. The trail is amazing!  Some of it is fairly simple walking in the woods, but then you are in a maze walking under and over falls.  There is a rope to get over one portion. There were large boulders to climb and immense cliffs.  Climbing up the ladder can be very tiring. The picture only shows parts of that climb.

Fun!!!

Fall Creek Falls

We did a couple of nights near Chattanooga Tennessee in an RV Park. We caught up on laundry, went grocery shopping, tried to catch up on internet stuff (failed!), and we took a short hike along their trails.

Our next stop has been Fall Creek Falls in Tennessee.  Weird name, but this is where Fall Creek has a falls. Apparently this is the highest U.S. falls east of the Rockies (256 feet). It wasn’t wide or a large volume since the stream was fairly low, but it was tall. That's John down there in the rocks.

We did a lot of hiking here.  The trails aren’t really long (we hiked 5-6 miles) but they are difficult and steep.  There’s a lot of stepping up and down rocks and pulling yourself up by holding on trees and roots.  We saw quite a few trees that are dark in spots where hundreds of people have held on to climb up and down these paths.

We also enjoyed talking to many of the people we met along the trails including a couple of ladies who took this picture of us at the base of the falls.

There is a hike down to the base of the falls that many older adults skip because of the fear of the climb back up. The hike really up really wasn’t bad.  It’s over some slippery rocks and some other hikers saw snakes, but it took only 15 minutes to get back to the top. A different hike even required pulling yourself up by a cable.

This swinging bridge scared a lot of people (kids and adults) but was actually not too bad. 

If you go, come during the week.  On weekends the place was packed with kids swimming and screaming. During the week it was much quieter to enjoy a hike.

Bessemer, Sloss Furnaces, and Golden Flake Board of Directors

We visited the Sloss Furnaces before but it was during October. The place was set up for Halloween haunted house tours with all sorts of creatures hanging around the place. This time they are just starting to set up the tour so we could see more of the place.

The equipment was purchased over the 90 years of operation.  This is the Skip Hoist which is somewhat more modern.

The blast furnaces were built in 1927 and operated until the site closed in 1971.

I just love the pipework for the boilers.

Bessemer Hall of History is a neat little local museum. The prison bars where Martin Luther King, Jr. was held in the Bessemer jar was in the museum. I just loved an original sign for an old-time train toilet “Please do not flush toilet while train is in station.”  I can’t quite get that picture out of my head. This typewriter is from Eagle’s Nest which was Adolf Hitler’s hideaway. So it’s popularly called Hitler’s typewriter.  Hmmm. I can’t see him sitting there and typing away.

And my vent…we planned to take a tour of the Golden Flake potato chip factory in Birmingham.  After getting poor directions online, we finally found the place. Then we found out the board of directors was visiting the plant today so they cancelled all tours. So let me understand this. They would rather have upset customers just so they can impress some people that are really just employees of the company? I’ll make sure I don’t buy Golden Flake chips since even the board of directors don’t care about customers!

Tannehill

We’re planning on revisiting places (like Tannehill State Park in Alabama) along with new places (like Conecuh Forest).  Tannehill was my favorite state park in our first trip. This time I realized it’s my favorite for the things to see here, but camping is a real pain. It’s popular and the sites are right on top of each other. This shows the RV barely clearing a tree on one side and just enough room for the awning on the other side.

On the good side, the park is the site of the Tannehill Ironworks.  It provided iron to Selma for the Civil War.  Just before the end of war, the North destroyed the furnaces and equipment in a raid. The current furnaces are a combination of the original furnaces and reconstruction.

There is a pioneer village in the park.

There is a great Iron and Steel Museum at the park. One of the displays showed early wood pipe that was used for water. The story is “During a fire, a hole was drilled in the wood pipe, water would spurt out and firemen would fill up their buckets. Afterward, they would put a wood plug in the hole…hence comes the name FIREPLUG.” Interesting! This is an early steam engine.

This Confederate saltpeter pot would make a wonderful hot tub if it wasn’t for the fact that there are remnants of bat dung still in it!

And deer wandering through the park.

Mushrooms

Just because I love the look of them.  Mushrooms and lichen!

Creepy Crawlies

We’ve moved to Alabama to the Conecuh Forest. 

Part of camping is seeing creepy things. Oh, I mean it's exciting to be part of nature! A trip to the camp bathhouse can be exciting. There were frogs outside the door plus a centipede in the sink.

We saw this frog on our RV. I’m not sure if we carried it from the beach or it just jumped on.

This is some guts on the beach back at Fort Pickens.  I don’t know what it’s from, but it’s pretty disgusting!

To end on a better note, sunrise on the pond in Conecuh Forest.

National Naval Aviation Museum

This is a very, very big museum with an overload of things to see.  But here are just a few pictures from the museum.

Forts

We've been to Advanced Redoubt several times, but this time we happened to visit during the weekly ranger tour. During the tour they take us to areas that are normally off-limits. The tour included crossing the moat and entering this door.  I crawled through the smaller door (being short it was easy!) but everyone else walked through the big door.

Earlier this year we had major rains.  The water was up to the marks on the wall that are thigh level.

Brick details

I like the shadows and shapes. These are from both Advanced Redoubt and Fort Barrancas.

Oddities

We visited T.T. Wentworth before (TTWentworth), but I enjoyed it so much I wanted to see it before leaving Pensacola.  We got to see the cat again (Petrified Cat).  Here’s the shoe from the World’s Tallest Man. I’m not sure if he would still be the World’s Tallest, but that’s the hype.

There was a section on the 50’s and 60’s reaction to the atomic bomb.  This was when everyone was taught to “Duck and Cover”, no matter how worthless it would be if a nuclear bomb actually struck.  One thing I didn’t know was about Mad Magazine. While I considered it a wonderful magazine that was a satire about general politics, apparently it started particularly to lampoon Cold War fears.  The museum said that the title came from the nuclear age acronym for Mutually Assured Destruction. Is that true?

Clouds are gorgeous in Pensacola. The last picture is a rain squall right off the coast, though it does look a big like a mushroom cloud.

Blue Angels

Pensacola is known as the home of the Blue Angels.  That’s the Navy’s top fliers. They perform in air shows all over the country but have regular practice sessions in Pensacola.  Somehow we never found time to go to the viewing stands at the National Naval Aviation Museum to see them. So, before we left Pensacola we got to see them from Fort Pickens which is just across the bay. I think seeing the formations would be more intense at the viewing stands since the team flies sets up everything to provide the best show from that viewpoint.  But from the fort you can see how they set things up. And it can be very loud as the planes quickly pass over the fort. It’s pretty cool!

This is from the Naval Museum.  The same formation but I was MUCH closer (and they weren’t moving)!

The smoke the plane lets off looks like a roller coaster here.  It’s from a slow flight up and a quick flight down.

I just like this picture that John took.  Looks like there are flies around my head.

As we were waiting for the show at the fort we met several friendly groups who were also waiting.  We were discussing all the supposedly haunted places in the area with one family.  The girl told us a story about when she visited Fort Barrancas. She was walking through the fort when she told her mom who was behind her to stop pulling the ponytail on her hair.  Turns out her ponytail was floating up in the air without anyone around it.  Bizarre!

In honor of the haunted places in Pensacola (actually, it’s just because of the white coloring), this one is called a Ghost Crab.