Corinth Recreation Area, AL

We have been following the same route we took last year from Memphis. Although we will soon be heading in a different direction, we continued last year's route after we left Red Bay with another stop at Corinth Recreation Area near Double Springs, AL. Corinth Recreation Area is in the Bankhead National Forest.

Corinth has paved roads and pads, gravel patios, and widely-spaced, grassy sites. The campground isn't heavily used, and it's the only thing at the end of County Road 57 so there are few people, no traffic noise, and no trains. The only things we heard were the birds, cicadas, and the occasional acorn dropping on the roof.

Corinth has two loops of RV sites, one of which has full hookups. All but 5 or 6 of the full-hookup sites are non-reserveable, but most of the 5 or 6 full hookup sites are open enough for us to get satellite reception. We reserved the same site we had last year.

Being a national recreation area, there is a 50% discount on the camping fees with the America the Beautiful Senior Pass. Unlike Corps of Engineers campgrounds that discount the entire camping fee, however, Corinth only discounts the basic camping fee, not the extra charges for hookups. But including the $9 reservation fee, the nightly cost worked out to about $16, which isn't bad for a quiet, uncrowded campground with huge sites and full hookups.

We continued to have rain off and on, so that was a good excuse to not do much. We got our bikes out of the car, aired up the tires, and rode a little; but the rain and wet roads in the campground limited our riding. There isn't a Walmart anywhere near the Corinth Recreation Area, so we stopped to stock up on groceries at the Walmart in Russellville on our way to Corinth. Therefore, we didn't even leave the campground the entire week we were there. However, we did get the screens and the windows on the motor home cleaned inside and out in spite of the rain, Margery did some research for our future travels and for a project she's working on for Lora, and we did some more general puttering around the motor home.

That gave us plenty of time to read, to relax, and to reflect on our travels to the Pacific Northwest this past summer. In addition to all the interesting things we saw and wrote about in our posts over the past few months, there were a number of things we observed that were interesting, but that didn't really relate to any of the major things we wrote about.

For example, one of the things we noticed was how many people ride bicycles in northern California, Oregon, and Washington. All the towns and cities have bike lanes, and you have to keep a sharp eye for cyclists when you're driving. We saw cyclists on the hills of San Francisco as well as on the 3,000 or 4,000 foot climb up to Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park in Washington. All we could say was when we saw the hills was, "Are they crazy?" Well, maybe they are, but they're really in good shape, too.

We saw an astounding number of espresso huts in Oregon and Washington. We knew Starbucks got its start in Seattle, and we were aware the area is known for coffee and coffee shops; but there are coffee shops and little drive-through and drive-up espresso huts like the one below just about EVERYWHERE, including many that were right across the street from each other.

We were also surprised at the dearth of country music stations in Oregon and Washington. We always thought of the area as being somewhat sophisticated and anything but red-neck, and we didn't expect to find many country stations; but in most places we couldn't find ANY.

Seattle reminded us a lot of our old hometown of Pittsburgh. There are hills, the roads have a lot of twists and turns, and there are many of roads that intersect at odd angles. In fact, not only do the streets in Seattle intersect at odd angles, we felt like we could count on the fingers of one hand the number of intersections that involved only 4 streets. There were a lot of 5-way, and even some 6-way intersections. 

Northern California and the Northwest have a lot of old cars. By that we mean classics, not clunkers...and many are not restored to their former glory as a collector's item, but driven daily as the family car. California is known for its car culture, which includes an interest in classic cars; but we were surprised to see a lot of classics in Oregon and Washington, too. There is also a way bigger percentage of cars along the West Coast from foreign-owned car companies than there are in Middle America or in the East. In fact, we saw only a handful of American-made cars in the Silicon Valley. Some of the more popular makes in Silicone Valley include Lexus, Acura, BMW, Mercedes, and Audi.

Speaking of cars, like most people, we usually sneak a little above the speed limit when we're driving in the car. Of course, there are always a few who drive way over the speed limit and a few who doddle along at well under the speed limit, but it usually seems like 90% of people drive at the speed limit or a little above. In the Northwest, it seemed to us there were an unusually high number of drivers (one third to almost half) who drove under the speed limit.

Dump trucks we saw in the Northwest are different from those we are used to seeing in other areas of the country. Most of the dump trucks had dump trailers with long tongues. We're not sure of the reason for the long tongue, except that maybe the long tongue allows the truck itself to be dumped without unhooking the trailer.

As expected, we saw a lot of RVs in Washington. However, most of the license plates were from Washington rather than from other states. Many of the out-of-state tourists we met in Seattle flew in.

Another thing we noticed was the large number of Thai restaurants in the Northwest. They're as plentiful as Italian restaurants are back in our old hometown of Pittsburgh.

We did write about all the flowers in Oregon and Washington, but they were so impressive, we thought they warranted being mentioned again. The roadsides are lined with wildflowers like these in the Hurricane Ridge area of Olympic National Park.

There are also many gardens from large, public gardens to small, home-owner gardens. The garden in the next photo is at a lavender farm in Washington.

After a week of relaxation at Corinth Recreation Area, we hit the road again and continued on our way south. There will be more information about our next destination in our next post.

Comments

[Linda Starr]

Hi, we're headed out soon to find a new home and will travel from California to the East Coast. I'm looking forward to perusing your posts about the various states to see what we won't want to miss, thanks.