oak mountain state park

Campering may be different from camping, but in one respect, road-tripping in Vanna Grey is no different than in any other vehicle. When it comes to route, THE WEATHER IS IN CHARGE.

And thanks to climate change, late-February weather has tricks up its sleeve we’d never have dreamed of when we started this road-tripping business a dozen years ago.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We left Albuquerque on Thursday in bright, innocent sunshine. If my Adventure Buddy Beth hadn’t been leaving too, we’d have been mighty tempted to stay.

Drawing us forward, though, was a reservation that night for one of our favorite road-trip discoveries: gorgeous Palo Duro Canyon.

Pictured: Palo Duro in 2017. Not pictured: Palo Duro in 2024.

Imagine the prettiest little cousin of Grand Canyon, only 30 minutes from Amarillo (the big ugly child of a cattle feedlot and a monster truck rally).

But I shouldn’t be saying mean things about Amarillo. Right now it’s an endangered oasis in a hot desert of suffering, thanks to the million-plus-square-mile fire that was burning out of control just north of there. Just when we wanted to drive on through.

[Not pictured: The Smokehouse Creek Fire. Nor all the fires in Oklahoma, along the length of I-40…the route we’d planned to take.]

Weirdly enough, the top of the Texas Panhandle was also getting SNOW that morning—good for the fires, I guess, but one more reason for us to keep ourselves and Vanna out of trouble.

[Not pictured: “Some say the world will end in fire/Some say in ice.”]

So we ditched all plans, and our camping reservation (sob) and headed SSE to Roswell (not pictured: aliens), then straight east into…big sigh…West Texas. Which, as it happened, was delightfully snow-free, and NOT ON FIRE.

[Not pictured: West Texas, or the motel we defaulted to when we couldn’t find a campground that felt like it catered to—well, folks with discretionary funds and time. Vacationers, not those planted by necessity. I’m glad those campgrounds are there for those who need them. I just didn’t want to stay there.]

[Not pictured: those campgrounds.]

Our second day driving through Texas, we did score a decent bike path on the outskirts of Dallas…

(Not pictured: the stench from either a dump or a sewage plant—or both)

…and a pleasant campground at a state park near the Louisiana border. We got there as darkness fell, and next morning I forgot to take a picture, so…

[Not pictured: Eastern Texas’s Martin Creek Lake State Park]

Next day we got another nice bike ride in Shreveport, Louisiana.

It’s the Red River, but it’s doing a pretty good Mississippi impression.

Along the way, I noticed that the clover we were zooming past all seemed to have spotted leaves. On closer examination…

Happy St. Pattentines Day? St. Valentrick’s Day? “I love you; good luck!”

It was a Tarheel Men’s Basketball Day, and since we’ve been missing a lot of games due to travel, we decided to treat ourselves to a motel in Clinton, Mississippi with a TV. Afterward, I took myself on a walk around the nearby campus of Mississippi College and made the acquaintance of some attractive trees.

when it’s such a relief just to have something to photograph

#treenerd (Doesn’t it seem like this one needs a swamp instead of a lawn?)

The trees didn’t care about the Heels’ victory as much as I did.

On our last day that doesn’t include my home state of North Carolina, we managed to combine both recreation and camping by stopping at Oak Mountain State Park, just outside of Birmingham, Alabama. We’ve stayed here twice before and I’ve recorded our admiration for the park’s trails both times.

Spring was busting out…

Sometimes this is all you need. Which is good, because this is all you get.

…including my favorite southern treat, the redbud:

Our last visit, however, was a few years ago and since then I’ve read a book which has changed the way I experience Oak Mountain. Economist Heather McGhee’s book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, explores the lengths to which white America cut off its own nose to spite its segregationist face, when forced to integrate public facilities following the Brown v. Board decision.

Rather than swim with Black folks, white folks all over the country FILLED IN AND DESTROYED THEIR PUBLIC SWIMMING POOLS. The largest such public pool in the U.S. at the time? According to Dr. McGhee, it was right here at Oak Mountain, and it’s now an equestrian field. Next to which we camped.

(Not pictured: a huge public swimming pool filled with multi-racial families.)

Talk about erasure! We’d enjoyed the place twice and would have continued to blithely enjoy it without knowledge of this despicable history, had it not been for Dr. McGhee’s scholarship. I highly recommend her book; it will actually fill you with more zeal than despair.

But for now? It’s on to North Carolina, and all the friends and family and fried chicken and Tarheels that entails. I can just picture it. See you there!

Oh, so you finally remembered to take a picture of ME? This whole NC thing better be worth it…

Piney hills. Black-water cypress swamps. Real, deciduous oaks that understand they’re supposed to grow new leaves every year. Maples starting their spring blush. Redbuds already blushing hard. Spanish moss. Magnolias.

We headin’ HOME. Or I am, anyway. But this journey was the idea of my Californian Mate, so he can hardly complain.

But the scenery is already leading to some ~~arguments~~ interesting discussions. I’m a western chauvinist with a deep strain of southeastern nostalgia–an uncomfortable combination. Makes me tetchy. I can claim–and do–that northwestern forests are more dramatic, beautiful, and walkable than those in, say, my home state of North Carolina…but you can’t. The Mate walks into this trap constantly.

Him: “Those pines are a such a weird shade of green.”
Me: “Well, at least they have more individuality than our firs.”
Him: “These wintertime hardwoods make the forest look dead!”
Me: “But at least you can see through it this time of year! And look at the size of that hickory!”

I’ve come to think of these southeastern forests as the ultimate glass-half-full-vs.-empty scenario. I can choose to see a scrubby, scratchy, inhospitable tangle of poison ivy, smilax and honeysuckle…or I can see heritage: my daily walk to school; summer blackberrying; finding a safe spot to pee in the woods during a run. Or, in literary daydreams, Scout Finch and Zora Neale Hurston’s Janie.

I know my bipolar attitude is the result of too much history. I can’t see cotton fields without thinking about James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men; can’t see big magnolias without thinking of Billie Holliday’s “Strange Fruit.” The South is soaked in more misery per acre than any other region in our country.

Usually, I’ll admit, I see those scruffy, history-laden woods and and think how lucky I am to live diagonally across the continent from here, in forests where nothing wants to bite me or make me itchy, or make me think of slavery, share cropping and the KKK.

These woods aren’t dead–they’re just getting their beauty sleep.

But if anyone else says that to me? Nuh-uh, honey.

BTW: I’ll write about our discovery of Cumberland Island in my next post. Right now I just have to give a little shout-out to our friends Raven and Chickadee (a.k.a. Eric and Laurel) for steering us to Oak Mountain State Park via their travel blog, Ravenandchickadee.com. This largest of Alabama’s state parks offers miles of steep, winding trails in wild-feeling woods an astonishing ten miles south of its largest city, Birmingham. We didn’t get enough time there and look forward to staying longer some day. In Alabama!