Yes, you read the sign correctly – it is the Old Fart’s Trading Post in “downtown” Double Springs! But before I get into info about Double Springs, here’s an update on the place we are staying.

After the storm, the sun came out and the rest of our ride to the Corinth Recreation Area in Double Springs, AL was uneventful – thank goodness!

We arrived at the campground about 2:30 p.m. and after checking in, quickly found our site, #8 in Yellow Hammer Loop. Nice campground!  The sites were quite big, paved with full hookups (including sewer which is often not provided at federal parks), a wooden picnic table, a fire pit/grill, and pole with hooks for hanging lights, fish or whatever.  The sites are very heavily wooded so lots there’s a lot of privacy.  When we arrived, there weren’t any other campers around but that quickly changed as the weekend approached.

Our site, #8 on Yellow Hammer Loop, was very comfortable, however the flat area on the passenger side was relatively narrow due to the terracing of the sites and the firepit and wooden picnic table were behind the coach. Sites 14-18 probably have the best, although tree obscured, view of the lake however it appeared these sites might be a bit short for a 40 footer.

In Yellow Hammer Loop sites 9, 17, 19, 25, & 27 are pull thru’s. In our opinion site 17 is probably the largest and most private with an exceptionally long overall length. We did not get a chance to thoroughly explore Firefly Loop (the only other loop) although our impression was very positive. Tree cover might be less heavy on this loop and the sites might be slightly closer together and/or have a bit less privacy – there did not seem to be any sites in Firefly loop with what could be called a “water view”.

Corinth Recreation Area is an Army Corps of Engineering Campground located in the William B. Bankhead National Forest on Lake Lewis Smith and has approximately 60 sites (including 7 tent sites) although when you go to recreation.gov to make reservations it only shows 8 sites available, apparently the rest of the sites cannot be reserved and are on a first come, first serve basis.  Being a COE campground, the rate was $14/night (with the Senior National Parks Pass discount) although for some reason there was an additional $9 transaction fee for the reservation – not normally the case at COE parks.

In addition to the campground, there is a boat ramp just for the campers, plus a separate day use area with the primary boat ramp, picnic shelters and a beach (which happened to be closed).

If you ever go to this park be aware that when you look at the facility map on recreation.gov, the campsites look like they are right on the water, but the campground is on a bluff.  Nice views from some sites but it’s a little bit of a trek down to the water’s edge and there really isn’t anything that can be described as a beach within the campground itself.

During our 3 night stay at Corinth, we checked out the bath facilities which appeared to be very clean and looked relatively new (we don’t normally use them though) . We walked several trails which brought us to a nice overlook of the lake as well as an old and overgrown section of the park with defunct campsites, a swimming platform and an old boat ramp – interesting.

In regard to facilities, electricity was solid with 123v on both legs of the 50A – no errors were logged by our Progressive EMS power monitoring system during our stay. The water pressure was strong. The sewer setup is one of the better that we have encountered so far, a stainless sink surrounds the threaded sewer cap and has an additional vent/drain – this nicely contains any spills or accidents. The only other place we have encountered this is at Fort Wilderness (Disney World).

OTA TV was virtually non-existent although we could consistently receive 1 or 2 of the main networks on the bedroom TV which apparently has a better tuner than the other (both are Samsung’s), but at sunrise the obviously weak signal would succumb to the additional radiation. Consequently, there were lots of portable satellite systems in use here – note that a roof sat unit is likely to be troublesome due to the heavy tree cover. In regard to internet access, Sprint 3G was marginal but useable, Verizon 3G was a little better.

Double Springs is a small town with a population of just over 1000 people.  In the “downtown” area there is a small shopping plaza with a Food Mart, Subway and a few other retail stores.  Rob liked the wall they had built out of coke cases in the Food Mart! There’s also a Jack’s fast food restaurant, several banks and quite a few churches.

It’s kind of funny, as we drove into town in the motor home, we noticed a sign that mentions restaurants and “unique specialty shops”.  Well, the only unique specialty shop we saw was the “Old Fart’s Trading Post” and then a trailer on the side of the road with a big sign “Insane McCain’s Fireworks”.

On Friday, our plan was to drive the 1 hr 15 minutes to visit the Tiffin plant in Red Bay, AL which is right on the border of Mississippi.  To arrive in time for the 9:30 a.m. tour, we left our site around 6:30 a.m. and drove into the town of Double Springs.  We stopped at the Double Springs Diner for breakfast where you could get 2 eggs, bacon/ham/sausage and a choice of two, grits, biscuit or gravy.  We both had scrambled eggs, biscuits with brown gravy (which we later heard was “made just like grandma used to” with bacon fat – egads that was real healthy!) and bacon for $3.50. After breakfast we headed over to Red Bay – more on that in a separate post.

On Saturday, we stopped at the old Corinth Baptist Church just outside the campground entrance and then took a ride over to Natural Bridge State Park which was pretty neat.  Both of these will be covered in a separate post.