The wood that wouldn't - Lake Guntersville to Cheaha

We were a little sad leaving Cathedral Cavern. Our friends from the night before seemed like such a team, grumpy disparate group though they were. 

When we pulled out, Lemar was trying to haul a dead side by side, a wheelbarrow full of leaves on its back, out of the cave with his truck. 

Jimmy, an eighty year old Native American who worked there as cave guardian, was pushing mud out of its mouth on top of a small engine attached to a big plough blade. Robert and Cheryl were power washing the mud off the steps into the entrance.  Lynn was in the office arguing with someone on the phone. Nobody was talking to each other much after three days of mud, but everyone was focused on saving the cave.

We swung down the hill in the sunshine and cruised through Guntersville, closed tight on a Sunday. We didn’t want to leave the lake, so we made our way along the opposite bank to the Guntersville Lake State Park, pearl of the Alabama State Park system.

Mary Beth was manning the Country Store and Registration Centre. She was just back from four days off. She hadn’t had four days off in a row since her daughter had the baby. She couldn’t mind nothing. We ambled through the registration. It amazes me that although the registration for every state park in America is a long tortuous paper-based affair, with a sign for the car and a sign for the site, and a code for the gate and a code for the bathhouse, I am nonetheless meticulously entered into a database in which I will be forever Noraine Glendening, because a woman six years ago couldn’t spell my name.  Every receipt is the same.

It’s interesting how well they track me.

We spent the rest of the day sleeping and eating. It has been a long trip. Driving an RV is different to a car. You go so bloody slowly most of the time. And when you are State Parking, you are always dealing with complicated mapping. Garmin has the State Parks in its database, but it’s tortuous trying to extract them.

It was warm with just a nice breeze though, so when the sun set, we got out the two huge bundles of wood we had bought and settled in for a lovely lakeside fire.

Green wood.  Dripping with sap.

No kindling, on account of everything being wet from Saturday’s rain.

We used all the peanut oil.

We started on the barbeque fuel.

We soaked toilet paper in a blend of peanut/ bbq oil/ pepper. (No really).

I was ripping pages out of my journal.

Finally, I spent forty minutes lying on my stomach blowing on the wood that wouldn’t and by about nine, with the moon high and Orion in the sky, we got an ember. I refused to go to bed until I had an inferno, that yes I know was a little pointless in the humid air.

Next morning, the lake was grey and tufty and the gulls who lived on it were wheeling and crying and we thought, best go south.

We were headed for Cheaha State Park, just off the I20, on our way back to Atlanta. But we had no idea where we were going. Finally, we pulled into a Jacks Chicken Shack and had a pancake breakfast so we could use the internet

I forgot to ask for no gravy on my pancakes so I didn't get to eat mine, but I got the address for Cheaha and checked the weather and saw it was to be a bit stormy. I noticed a paragraph at the end of the site about how Cheaha was the highest point in Alabama at 2,400 feet.

Cool.

We pulled out onto the I20.

It started to FUCKING POUR.

BIBLICAL MONSOON RAIN.

I dunno. Siri was getting her period maybe. She brought us down the I20. We drove through Gadston, 14 miles of strip miles. She circled around. There was a road closed. She recalculated. It seemed like we went through the same town but the Chicken Shacks weren’t in the right places.  

Down through another conurbation of commercial hell.  Through some place called Anniston.  Then suddenly, out of the city and down a nice paved country road.

Then left onto a country road. A bit narrow, but peaceful.

Then we passed a sign saying “County services end here”

“That’s new”, I thought.

Then the pavement ended.

Then we started going uphill.

I remembered reading that Cheaha was on top of a mountain.

I remembered those folks who followed the GPS a couple of years ago and died in their minivan in Utah.

We passed a house.

We passed a guy in a plumbers truck.

The road narrowed.

It was fucking POURING.

Finally, we got to a gate blocking the road so there were no more questions.

We reversed back down the mountain.

We reversed back down the mountain.

We reversed back down the mountain.

Finally, we got back on the I20 East and after 60 seconds there was a sign for the park.

I have a profound dislike of the machine that has taken over my navigational duties.

Thirty miles of 75 degree angle motoring later we reached the highest peak in Alabama. 2,400 feet. Mount Cheaha, from the Creek word Chaha, the high place. It was a place of pilgrimage for them.

It was mysterious and gloomy with trees looming out of the thick cloud covering the mountain.

We managed to find our site and got changed into warmer clothes and then headed out for dinner at the park restaurant.

It was a lovely stone building with high vaulted ceilings, built by the CCC during the Depression. Huge windows looked out onto the valley below Cheaha. In the very west we could see a ribbon of pink that was the sun setting somewhere where it wasn't raining.  The restaurant had three huge deer antler chandeliers.

We were the only people in the restaurant. There were two young women serving us and a young man who appeared to be a cook.  There was a second young man dressed in cowboy gear who was just hanging around. None of them were more than 22 years old.

We ordered the pork wings. Peak BBQ at the peak of Alabama.

While we were gnawing our way through the massive plate full of pig's legs that emerged from the kitchen the grumpier of the two servers appeared with our entrees.  As politely as one can when one is trying to eat a pig's leg dipped in BBQ sauce I asked her to keep them warm until we were ready.

Eventually the pig's wings settled a bit and our steaks came out.

I had ordered a baked potato. I don't know what the hell they did with the potato but I am Irish and I have eaten every imaginable kind of badly cooked potato over the course of my 45 years and I could not eat that one.  Undescribably disgusting mush.

The steaks were so bad we were in tears of laughter at the end. The lodge sold Alabama wine (apparently wine is a bright new industry in the state), so I ordered a glass of cabernet sauvignon.

It went very well with the steak.

That's putting it mildly.

After a while I went to find the ladies and the entire staff plus the cowboy were cuddled up on the couch watching tv in the foyer of the restaurant. When they saw me coming they scattered like teenagers when the cops arrive to the party.

Even though it was nice and warm in the restaurant, we agreed we'd leave them in peace so we paid our bill and left them enough of a tip to get some beers if they needed it and headed back to our site. It had stopped raining but the wind, which was still warm, was moaning and groaning over the mountain and through the trees.  We sat and listened to it for a bit and were glad it wasn't bearing snow.

Next morning the sun was streaming gloriously through the trees and we got to walk the trail to Bald Rock and see the view from the top of Alabama. Then we got in our little motorhome and headed back to Georgia where we will sit under some pine trees in the sun for a day or two more, and then head back to snowy Nova Scotia.

It's been a trip though.