Alabama - Day 27 - to Creola

I-65 RV Park, Creola
Friday, 27 December 2019

today's route

I'd covered some of this route before and recognized some familiar sights, such as the orange orchard.  But I didn't remember there were so many hills between Ozark and Enterprise and Opp.  In fact, I was dealing with hills most of the way to Mobile.  The land got a little flatter as I got closer to the Gulf, but it was nothing like the Texas Coast area, which is flat for miles.

I noticed a lot of calves in the fields.

I crossed some colorfully named creeks, such as Murder Creek and Burnt Corn Creek.  I'd really like to know where those names came from.

I kept seeing a lot of Texas license plates - more than Florida plates.  Weird.

I passed the Wind Creek Casino and Hotel, which has its own water tower.

Shortly before I got to tonight's campground, I crossed a very long bridge.  Very long.  This same bridge crossed wetlands, then the Tensaw River, then Mifflin Lake and Middle River, then Little Lizard Creek, and finally the Mobile River.  One bridge.

This campground seems okay, though their roads could use a little maintenance.  When I expressed some concern about walking my dogs, the young woman in the office assured me all the campers kept their dogs on leashes.

Except when I took the dogs out about 20 minutes later, 2 very unleashed dogs started following us and getting my dogs riled up, and it was very trying.  I stopped in the office and told the woman not everybody had their dogs tied up and she said oh, those were strays.  They'd been dumped at the campground last week and were hanging around.  Which didn't make me feel better because how would I be able to take mine out if they weren't under anybody's control.

And sure enough, when I took my kids out for the before-bed walk, the strays materialized and started following us again.  I have a really hard time when I walk my two anyway, because Gracie keeps insisting on lagging behind and then wrapping her leash around my legs or my body which can throw me off balance.  Which is what she did this night.  I was trying to get her around me on the right side when she suddenly raced out on the other side toward the strays at the same time Dexter did the same thing on the other side, and over I went.  They ended up dragging me across the gravel until they finally got tired of dragging a human around.

But those strays never went away.  I'd have expected them to retreat when my dogs went after them, but they didn't.  Which kept my dogs focused on them, so it was all I could do just to keep lying on the ground, acting as a sea anchor, focusing all my attention on not letting go of the leashes.  It was really awful.  Really awful.

Fortunately, a young woman was doing her laundry at the time and came out of the nearby laundry room and helped me - took the leashes so I had a chance to get up and shooed off the strays.

But then when I started back to our RV, I saw that the strays had gone that way and were hanging around right by our space.  There was no back route I could take to get there and I didn't know how to get home.  Meanwhile, both my arms were bleeding from various gravel scrapes and I was shaken up and crying and feeling helpless, which I hate.

I finally went back to the nice young woman and asked her to help me take the dogs back to the RV.  I knew I couldn't do it without help, and she was very sweet about it.  The strays retreated - I guess the 2nd person was too much for them or something - they didn't seem to mind me by myself.

I've got quite the stock of bandages of various sizes left over from Momma's various operations and illnesses, and I'm sure glad I brought them along on this trip.  I ended up with several sizes of scrapes on my left forearm and hand, and one deep scrape at my right elbow region that's about 4" long and 2" wide.  But I had bandages to fit them all and put iodine on them first to kill whatever germs I might have picked up.

It was hard to get in bed, because I have to crawl over the length of the mattress and it turned out I have some minor scrapes and bruises on both my knees.  But I'm seriously counting my blessings because I could have been hurt much worse.  Still, I'm talking to the campground people tomorrow.  They need to get those dogs out of here or refund me my money because the dogs and I are prisoners in the RV with those strays roaming around.