As we headed inland in Georgia to Jack Hill SP we went through the town of Claxton and they had a fruit cake factory so we decided to stop to buy some product. They had a small sales area, we joked that the CEO came out of his office to serve us.  In the USA for every dark fruit cake sold they sell 9 light fruit cakes; in Canada they sell 8 dark for every light fruit cake sold.  Since we both like dark we agree with the Canadian stat😉 We both grew up with mother’s who made delicious fruit cake at Christmas. We bought one of each so we could do a taste comparison and we also bought some Pecans, a Pecan loaf, and some preserves.

We had chosen to go inland since we couldn’t get any reservations in the State Parks along the coast as we’re getting closer to Florida and warmer weather. We had a nice premium site facing the small lake at Jack Hill SP (2 nights). We saw lots of turtles sunning themselves in the nice weather Saturday. They only had one small trail to hike but we did wander around the park logging a few more kilometers. They had two golf courses in the park (one regular and one mini) so we played two rounds on the mini golf course😉 We both managed to get a hole in one but at the end of 36 holes Joel was the overall winner.

Our third Georgia inland SP is Little Ocmulgee.  Enroute, we made a few interesting stops.  First in the town of Santa Claus, it’s Christmas all year round.  We had fun checking out the street names.  We would have checked out the church, but the Sunday service was on.  Next stop was Vidalia, like in the onion. Unfortunately, the museum was closed, we could peek through the window and see their living exhibit out front as well as lots of other signs around this “onion” town.

We had a good laugh when we arrived at our campsite in the nearly empty Little Ocmulgee SP (3 nights). We were camped beside the two park hosts, of all the spots we happened to pick that one! This park was large with a golf course, lodge, restaurant, and trails. Our first day we explored on foot and did 7.5 kms around the park including the trail that had the “what am I riddles for kids”. The next day we rode our bikes covering 10.5 kms on the trails in the park, to the dam and the beach. Since there was a restaurant in the lodge (Mulligan’s), we went out for dinner and stayed for trivia night (Hot Pretzel appetizer, I had Chicken Quesadilla and fries, Sharon had Blackened Shrimp wrap with salad). We had a disadvantage as one category was ” What State am I”. We will admit our RV travel over the years did get us a few right answers. The lodge offered breakfast, so Sharon was excited to go for pancakes the next day, before heading to our next park. She couldn’t believe it when they said they didn’t have any pancake mix, guess they don’t know how to make them from scratch! She tried biscuits and gravy, a southern thing and Sharon said she prefers pancakes! This SP had cable TV hookups, I guess they are hoping for long term campers.  Of course, we connected the cable but there really wasn’t anything to watch. They also had laundry with $1 for a wash and free dryer.  We didn’t have much but did a load, beats $3.25/wash at CreekFire RV Park in Savannah.

The next park inland was General Coffee SP for 4 nights, gradually working our way further south and west in Georgia. This park is 1500 acres and is known for a variety of habitats both wet and dry, from blackwater river swamps to upland sandhills with longleaf pines. Longleaf pines once dominated the southeastern coastal plain from Virginia to Texas but now only 3% of that habitat remains so it is important for State Parks like General Coffee to plant the seedlings to bring the habitat back to its original state.

The campsite we had wasn’t very level, so it took a bit of maneuvering to get to a pseudo level spot, good thing the site was large. We even had to trim a couple of branches as our roof was in the trees. General Coffee was great for hiking and biking. We did 5 kms hiking the first day, 7 kms the second day with a visit to the Heritage Farm which represents a South Georgia farm, 18 kms biking on almost all the trails in the park the next day, and 6.5 kms hiking on the last day.

The one night we were woken up at 2:30 am when 2 Owls were attacking a squirrel or a possum right by our campsite! The owls seemed to be talking to each other and their prey was absolutely screaming, at least for a few minutes, and then it went quiet😉 I opened the blinds but couldn’t see anything, but we did have branches or pinecones hitting our roof so the owls may have been directly overhead. Eventually we could hear them fly out over the West Swamp area.

The Heritage Farm (representing 1800’s) was interesting with a cabin setup for ladies quilting and in the back half they had live reptiles including a really cool and large Tiger Salamander (also called the mole salamander), never seen one before. On the grounds they had the Meeks Cabin, a smokehouse, a blacksmith house, tools from the tar and turpentine industry, a tobacco drying barn, and lots of animals wandering around. Many of the original pioneers in this area were of Scots Irish descent.

On our MTB ride we did the hiking trails, but we also covered many of the equestrian trails which was cool as we saw a small group of wild pigs in the forest. We really enjoyed this park with lots to see and do, and hear😉

On our way to the next park we stopped at Horse Creek Winery (which was a Harvest Host but we didn’t stay there) to try a flight of their wines. We liked the Cabernet Sauvignon and their dryer white so picked up a couple of bottles. They had some fun napkins in their gift shop. The place was very quiet as it was Super Bowl Sunday.

Our last new SP for this blog is Reed Bingham SP which covers 1613 acres including a 375-acre lake. There were several hiking trails where again they allowed you to hike or MTB on them. The network of trails is called the Coastal Plains Nature Trail as it covers baldcypress swamps, a pitcher plant bog (we didn’t see any), and a sandhill forest area. The park contains the threatened gopher tortoise and the indigo snake but the only tortoise we saw was in the park office since they tend to hibernate at this time of year due to the cool nights. However, we did see the burrows for the gopher tortoise as they had stakes with flags and trail cameras so you could see when they come out. The park was named after Amos Reed Bigham (1881-1969) as he was instrumental in creating the park. There was also a tie to Jimmy Carter in this park, when he was Governor of Georgia he helped to get the funding to create a bridge and road to get to the far side of the lake, originally the 2 sides operated separately.

We stayed 4 nights in this park, but it rained most of Sunday and Monday, so we really only got to explore on Tuesday and Wednesday. On those days we did a 12 km hike on the trails and then did a 20 km MTB ride on a combination of the trails and around the lake on the campground roads. There were some fun technical MTB sections due to the large baldcypress roots across some of the trail sections. The campsites were all fairly large and the park seemed to have a mix of longer term stay people and also 1 night pass throughs since it was close to an Interstate.

Our next blog will cover some harvest hosts and a few more Georgia State Parks before we enter Florida.