Southern Alabama Hospitality (ECT Day 63)

• Hiked Today: 25.1 miles
  • Alabama Connector (28.4 – 53.5)
• Total Hiked: 1,368 miles
• Total Paddled: 99.5 miles

Weather: 50-75°F, turned cloudy and windy, super storm at night

Hog Foot Creek to Cypress Landing (Day 63)

Today felt like the actual start to “The Alabama Road Walk.” Early on before committing to this trail, this was an obstacle in my mind. I feared the unknown of a section without FarOut telling me all the details, but it was more than that. At the core of my fears was it all being private land. Would I lose all momentum walking roads? Where would I stay each night?

I’ve heard it said that you pack your fears. If you’re afraid you’ll run out of food, you’re going to pack too much food. Or, if you’re afraid you’ll get cold, you’ll carry unnecessary additional layers. I’m not sure how you pack a fear like this, but maybe it has showed up in other ways. Like in the Keys, I think most hikers just stealth camped there. I booked my stays all ahead of time for the most part. That’s what I started doing here too, but really never got too far in my planning. Essentially, I had a plan for tonight, get to Cypress Landing RV Park.

As I started this morning, it didn’t feel like an obstacle anymore. It was quite nice and got me in a good mindset. Even if it’s all roads, I don’t know what interesting things might be found in this section. This morning I was really enjoying the expansive luscious green fields and farm scenes. And that’s sort of exemplifies how I might be surprised during this section as a whole.

I won’t try to sell folks on walking roads. I understand why some choose to skip these parts of the long trails. For me though, it’s part of the journey. I am realizing, I didn’t choose to do the ECT simply for scenic beauty and nature experiences. That’s always going to be a big part of it, but if that were my sole reasoning, I would likely have chosen a different trail, like the Great Divide Trail, Pacific Northwest Trail, or somewhere international.

What it is that this route offers that those don’t? I’m not sure I can put my finger on it yet, and maybe I never will. But there is something in the sheer length of this trail and the attempt to walk a continuous path across the eastern part of the continent, whatever terrain may be, natural or urban, trail or road. That goal keeps me going.

Today’s Hike 

Maybe it’s the many number of dogs in the southwestern U.S. that sets this trail apart? I had a few scary dogs situations this morning. This happens quite often actually. At one point, a trio started sizing me up on the one side of the road. Typically, I’ll quickly check traffic and maneuver to the other side. This time, however, two more came from the yard across the road trying to flank me! It was an ambush! Usually they have more bark than anything and that was the case here too. I love dogs, so it’s kind of sad to always be on the defensive out here.

Boooo… Go Blue!

I cruised pretty fast getting into the town of Andalusia, AL. My first stop once there was the Bluebird Cafe which was wonderful! I stayed for close to two hours and got a coffee, asiago bagel, and my first cinnamon roll of the trek! I’ve been on a splurging spree and might have to control myself a little better going forward. This felt good though being at a local spot as opposed to something like McDonald’s, which I had debated going a slightly different route for.

I liked Andalusia. It seemed quiet, but with some distinct and interesting architecture and stuff. Lots of brick. Before leaving town, I hit up the Piggly Wiggly and got some snacks for the next few days.

I also called ahead to the RV park and was told I could just show up and not worry about reserving my spot. Nice. They even invited me to a potluck tonight, which sounded fantastic to me. Then, it was hitting the highway again. 

The morning road was much more pleasant than the afternoon, which was busier and faster traffic. I persevered and got to my destination a little after 4:00 pm.

Getting windy! This is Gantt Lake, which is a dammed portion of the Conecuh River and covers quite a large surface area.

Making my way to the Cypress Landing RV office, I found it locked with the lights off. Then I remembered I was supposed to call when I got there to check in. On the phone, I got as far as, “Hi,” and then I saw someone coming at me talking on their cell phone. This was Shelby, who I’d talked with earlier. She gave me the lay of the land and essentially said I could set up wherever I wanted.

As we were chatting, the owner, Brody, came by and together they opened up the store and showed me the laundry and shower area. Not only did I get a personal tour of the place, when I tried to buy my detergent, soda, and body wash they wouldn’t let me and told me that I was their guest tonight. I was quite taken aback by this.

To add to the story, a pretty extreme storm was forecasted to roll through overnight. I found out the area was even under a tornado watch! Wind would be the main concern, although it sounded like we could probably anticipate some heavy rain and lighting too.

When I set up my tent, I didn’t know about the tornado watch, just that it was supposed to be strong winds, so I strategically tucked behind a tree as best I could. Taking more care than normal to make sure my stakes were all the way down and everything was squared away, I felt good about it. I had water and an outlet to charge, so I was pretty pumped about all this.

I headed over to the bathhouse and got laundry going and took a shower. Always an amazing feeling getting cleaned up when on these trails. While waiting for the dryer, I walked to the dock to check out the lake. The storm was a brewing!

At 6:00 pm, I’d finished with laundry and headed over to the barn for the potluck, except it turned out to be much more than just an ordinary potluck. Apparently, it was a Mardi Gras Fat Tuesday themed shrimp and crawfish boil! Are you kidding me!

Cypress Landing has a really nice barn. At times, they host weddings and events, but it sounds like more often the space is utilized for their community events like this.

The spread had a pile of crawfish for appetizers (a guy named Brian showed me how to go about eating them), loaded mac and cheese, New Orleans style beans and rice, frog legs, corn, corn bread, shrimp, red skinned potatoes, sausage, fried mushrooms and okra, and cake and brownies. There were two kinds of soups too, but I didn’t even get to them. Everything else I tried though haha. This includes frog legs, which I believe was a first for me. The cliche is true, they surprisingly did indeed taste like chicken. 

I think I need to work on my food photography, not the nicest display, but maybe that gets to my point of the overwhelming amount of good quality food I stuffed myself with!

I remember trying to eat crayfish in Michigan, but that was as a kid and my cousins and I had no idea what we were doing. We used to have a tradition that every year we’d fish the Clam River the first weekend of trout season. Usually, us kids would get bored of not catching fish and end up at a favorite spot we called “the horseshoe.” There, we’d start a campfire and mess about, which most times involved searching for and catching crayfish. I’m not sure if they’re the same species as crawfish down here, probably not, but I don’t recall we got much “meat” out of ours. Plus, we likely boiled them in a tin can or something.

The appetizers.

Everything tonight was delicious! At one point another staff member came and sat by me and offered me a beer. When I said I wouldn’t say no to one, she came back with two. The hospitality was incredible. Brody gave me a little introduction to the group since most of them all knew each other spending the winter together. Then, I got the chance to tell folks what I was doing and they got a kick out of it. Questions started popping up across the room. It was ton of fun and I even got to talk to some nice folks from back home, or at least just down the road in Plainwell, Michigan.

During all these fun festivities and fellowship, it seemed several people started worrying about me being in my tent overnight with the storm. It was expected to hit around 10:00 pm. Pretty soon a scheme was hatched (without me really even knowing at first) that I would stay inside tonight. Brody showed me to the wedding bridal dressing room where he said I could sleep. I mean, how great is this setup!

Of course I packed up my tent, hauled everything over, and moved in for the night. They even brought me a heater despite me saying it wasn’t necessary. Nimblewill had told me folks in Alabama will go above and beyond to try to give me a ride or this or that. He wasn’t wrong. This was probably the most amazing trail magic I’ve experienced on any of the long trails!

I wish I knew the story of this sign. It got brought out during the potluck and I liked it, but wondered how it came to be 😎

I am a note taker and often find myself jotting down random thoughts and ideas. It seems like on a daily basis I’m type random things into Google docs. I have so many of them now and they’re quite unorganized. For instance I have several different ones related to the ECT hike. Anyways, the way I was treated tonight, with these folks going out of there way to show kindness towards me, triggered a memory. I dug into my archives and found a list I’d made of “Some things to strive for during my ECT hike.” Not sure when I made it, I think in the Fall when still out in Yosemite. One of the items, I wrote down was…

“Be a force of happiness to those I encounter. Uplift them. Listen to them. Empathize with them. See each person for the unique person they are, and understand they have a story.”

Now that sounds great and everything, right? To be honest, this has not been at the forefront of my mind. I’ve been consumed with, well… life, the trail, the day to day things. And that’s how it is for all of us, we’re all out here trying to get by. This evening was a reminder of what it looks like when people choose to do things differently. We all have that opportunity to go above and beyond for our neighbors and, as you can tell, I was pretty inspired by the experience. So, thanks Cypress Landing community. Southern Alabama showing up in big ways!

Album of the Day:

“Daydream” (1995) by Mariah Carey