The retired life of Greg and Dona: Clear Springs campground in Homochitto National Forest

Friday 1/17/14 arrived at Clear Springs Campground at 2pm. It is located in Homochitto National Forest near Natchez MS (on the Mississippi river at the Louisiana border). There are several trails for hiking and biking near the campground so after a quick lunch we hopped on the bikes and road about half a mile to the trail head. It was an ominous sign when there is a "bike wash" station at the trail head. It really should have dawned on us how bad the trails were if they purposely added a bike wash station.

A bike wash at the trail head? What are we in far?

We started out on one of the shorter trails and I immediately knew I was not ready for this ride! I had to get off the bike and walk up a huge hill. Got back on and then had to get off again and walk down a huge hill. There were so many ups and downs and tree roots and curves..... I was a broken ankle waiting to happen. Both of us finally had to give up on the bikes and walk. We did find a better section of trail to ride on so we hiked back to where we left our bikes and walked them to the better trail. We rode for about 30 minutes then headed back to camp (after getting off bikes again and walking back with them). We decided to hike the longer trail in the morning.

For dinner I made skillet lasagna and the camper next to us brought us over some home made gumbo. It was sooo yummy. We ate all the gumbo and saved the lasagna for another night.

On Saturday 1-18-14, the temperature was 26.....burrr. The water hose connected to the outside of the camper froze so we didn't have water coming in. Fortunately the holding tank had enough water to get us through cooking and cleaning up after breakfast. We left for our hike at 9:45 (temp in the 30's). The trail we were hiking is 10.5 miles. It was a perfect day for hiking..... weather in the 50's, no bugs, nice breeze, sun beams shining thru the trees. The trails was lots of hills, lots of roots covered with leaves (hidden just right to trip you up). The scenery was nice but nothing spectacular. We didn't see any wildlife except for a few birds. It took us 4 hours and we didn't even do the entire trail. We took a cut-off at mile 7 and walked the last couple of miles down a paved road to the campsite. Total fun meter: 9 miles; 4-1/2 hours; couple of blisters..... priceless!

Looking good at the start of the hike!

Just one of the many hills we took on!

OMG..... 4 hours later.... I'm wupped!

After the hike, we had lunch, I had a nap then Greg
built a fire. We sat by the fire until sun-set and it started getting cold.
We only could get 1 TV station so we watched National Public Broadcasting: the news then the Lawrence Welk Show. We had a blast reminiscing!