Whitetail Ridge Campground (COE)

Lagrange, GA

First we’d like to thank our friends, Jim and Corinne, for recommending this campground to us.  We intentionally made it our last stop before spending Thanksgiving with Amy’s folks in Andersonville.  The only complaint we have about our stay here is the weather.  We arrived on Monday, November 12, to a steady hard rain and it pretty much stayed that way until Thursday.  Thursday didn’t rain (much) but it remained gray, cold, and breezy.  This campground is another Army Corps of Engineers campground like the one we stayed at near Clemson.  Like Twin Lakes, this campground is on a manmade lake, West Point Lake, and there are 3 other COE campgrounds on the lake.  Maybe someday, we’ll check those out as well but it will be hard to come back to the area and not want to stay here again.

When we pulled into the campground to check in, we asked the attendant if we would have any problems getting our rig into our site.  She gave our rig a once over and indicated we may have a challenge as the site is on a curve while going uphill.  She went into the check-in booth to look for other sites that may be available.  She provided us several alternatives but told us if we wanted to change, we’d have to do it online at recreation.gov and return to the office before setting up.  We drove to our originally assigned site to check it out and glanced at the alternatives we passed along the way.  We parked at the bottom of the hill, which was not a very steep grade at all, and decided we could get into the site without too much trouble.  Dan figured it might take some maneuvering but what the heck, it was Amy that needed to stand out in the rain to help direct.  We managed to get settled in place with only a few restarts and it only took Amy a few hours to dry out and warm up.

We managed to entertain ourselves while the rains came down.  We played various board games, Amy sewed, and Dan played video games on his PS4.  Even though the weather was still less than ideal on Thursday, we did go for a lake shore hike that was about 12 miles to the south.  Dan lugged his camera equipped with the big 200-500 mm lens in hopes of capturing pictures of birds.  This is the second time he carried it on a 4+ mile hike and saw no birds to photograph.  We did, however, see plenty of mushrooms that looked interesting.  

After the hike was over, we went to a nearby brewery that we had read about online called Chattabrewchee.  What we thought was its primary claim to fame is that it is the first brewery owned by an active duty woman.  This turned out to take a back seat to the first brewery tasting room we’ve visited that was self serve.  They had a wall of 6 iPads, each controlling 2 taps.  You insert the card they gave you in exchange for your credit card and you paid by the ounce.  The system gave us a running total of our account as we poured our own beer.  At 35-45 cents an ounce, it was pretty expensive.  Luckily none of the beers we sampled really hit home for us so we didn’t break the bank while we were there.

We woke up Friday morning to sunshine as most of our friends and family in the northeast woke up to several inches of snow, reminding us that even though its colder than we want (low 50’s) we are still glad we aren’t in Rochester.  We took advantage of the morning sun and hiked the campground’s trail that mostly follows the shoreline.  Dan, once again, carried his camera with the big birding lens attached and this time it was worth it.  We came across three separate blue herons during the hike.  This posting’s featured photo is one of them and another is included here as well.  

Tomorrow, we pack up and head to Andersonville.  We consider this the end of the first leg of our journey as Andersonville was our first truly scheduled destination and time.