We’ve moved… Finally !!!

Sunday 3/18/2012

Cotton Hill Campground, COE

Fort Gaines, GA

We finally left Deer Run RV Park near Troy, AL, on Thursday, March 15th.  We drove about 78 miles southeast to Cotton Hill Campground,

located about six miles north of Fort Gaines, GA.  It’s one of four Corps of Engineer campgrounds located near Walter F. George Lake.  The other three are located in Alabama.

Considering we hadn’t moved for about four and a half months, the trip went well.  It’s amazing how “out of practice” we can get when we don’t travel.  We took our time getting ready to go.  The slides went in without any problems.  (We had run the slides in and back out about two weeks ago just to make sure they worked.)  The landing gear went up without any problems too.  (Again, I operated them about two months ago.)  Just when I thought we were ready to go,  I realized I had forgotten to fuel up the truck.  No problem though, we just stopped at the place right down the road.  Luckily the diesel pumps were vacant, and I could just pull right in with the rig.  Unfortunately, they were out of diesel!!  So we headed into Troy, and I fueled up in town on the way through.  Other than the fuel issue and a late start, the trip went well. 

Earlier in the day, I checked online to see how many sites were available at the campground.  There were at least twelve available, so I wasn’t too worried about getting one.  When we arrived at the park, there were nine still available.  We left the rig at the gatehouse and drove the Honda in to check out the available sites.  We settled for site number 47.  All of the sites in the campground have water, 50/30/20 electric, and sewer hookups.  The roads are paved, and each site has a level concrete pad to park on.  Instead of a view of the lake, we had a view of a narrow inlet.

Another view of the inlet from our site.

Here’s a closer look at that yellow sign in the shot above.

I looked several times, but never did see any gators.  This is the inlet looking north…

and looking south toward the lake.

A view of our site from the inlet…

and a closer look.

A view of our site from the road…

looking north from our site…

and looking south.

Also, because of the trees, we couldn’t get a satellite signal or any OTA channels with our antenna.  So, no TV for four days.  That’s a long time for us to go without TV!!  This is our first COE campground, and we both agreed that we should have probably arrived earlier in the week to get a nicer (to us) site.  It’s very peaceful here.  The campground did fill up for the weekend, but everyone around us was fairly quiet and respectful.

On Sunday we drove north along the east side of the lake to Eufaula, AL.  We saw some beautiful old houses.  I read that many of them survived the Civil War because just before the town was to be burned down by the Union soldiers, the war came to an end.  Also while we were in town, we stopped in at one of the cemeteries.

This one had a very old section, but many of the headstones were hard to read.  Also, the condition of the cemetery itself was rather run down and was in need of some major cleaning up, mowing, and landscaping.  On the way out of town, we saw this sign.

We didn’t stop in, but it was very tempting.

We decided to head back home, so we headed south on the western side of the lake.  By going back this way, we ended up driving around the southern portion of the lake.  On the way back, we stopped in and checked out the two COE campgrounds that were closed when we drove over here in January.  White Oak Creek Campground had some really nice lakefront sites with electric and water.  The other one, Hardridge Creek Campground, had more wooded sites than lake view.  Hardridge Creek had several full hookup sites, but none with a lake view.

We both liked our first COE experience, but it would have been much better for us if we would have been able to use our TV.