After our evening with the goats and chickens in Florida, we continued North to the Georgia Alabama line to the Cotton Hill Campground, an Army Corp of Engineers park North of Ft. Gaines, Georgia, on the Chattahoochee River. This beautiful beachside campground is on the Walter F. George Lake which is a dam project with a massive earthen dam, spillways and power station. Our campground is one of many located around this lake, many of them are on the Alabama side though.
We really lucked out with the campsite accommodating our rigs size, some of the spots are really steep down or up into them and have short concrete pads. In our site #92 we had a pretty long driveway but still a pretty steep descent. From our site, it continued down the slope to the beach. We pulled nose into our spot instead of backing for two reasons. One to really enjoy the view outside our picture window (a/k/a windshield) and secondly, it was just easier. There is no turn around on the Pine Island loop once you turn down this way. We will have to back out of our site and down the road a little bit to turn around. We
noted a number of spots for a future visit to this campground. Probably will avoid the spring pollen season, a yellow coating of the pollen was everywhere. The cool evenings are a welcome treat and some of the days were hot and humid while others were very rainy.
We camped on the Georgia side of the lake, sometimes our phones were in the Eastern time zone of Georgia and sometimes they were in the Central time zone across the river. This side of the lake does not have as many amenities and is more state park land and corp parks than the Alabama side. We made a full circle around the dam after having dinner at Phil’s BBQ in Eufaula, Alabama.
We can highly recommend the place! From there we continued down the Alabama side to pick up groceries at the Super Walmart and then to the dam at the southern end of the lake. The powerhouse, spillways and the earthen embankment dam is massive. From the Georgia side, you can drive across the earthen dam to the lock. Just make sure you are back to the campground by 9:30 PM so you are not locked out at 10 PM. The gates are closed between 10 PM and 7 AM. No early departures and no late arrivals here!
Fed Up with FedEx at Walgreens
We watched someone on Youtube mention a partnership between FedEx and Walgreens. We checked out the local Walgreens website and they listed that you could send and receive packages there. So we ordered a “mail drop” from Escapees Mail Service of our physical mail. We usually just use the scanned PDF of our mail, but sometimes you need to get your hands on it. In this case, we had new credit cards sitting in Texas that we needed to activate within 2 weeks. Since we doubted that we get packages at this park we tried the Walgreens approach.
Escapees sent the package as planned, Fedex attempted the delivery and Walgreens refused it! This particular Walgreens is more than an hour round trip away. So we contacted FedEx, arranged for a second delivery and Barb went to meet the truck there. The store told Barb FedEx will not stop there, you have to go somewhere else in town. They did not know their website said they were a FedEx site. Regardless, FedEx failed to deliver the second day because they had temporarily lost track of the package. The Fedex support via chat was good, after a third attempt, they located it Southwest of us in Dalton, Alabama. So we got to check out another area of the country in our two hours round trip to their customer center that is open until 6:45 PM. We were even surprised to get a call the following day to confirm we got what we needed and they could close the support ticket.
Let’s just say, more effort of research is needed with the whole FedEx / Walgreens partnership. In theory, this can work, but there are some details we need to figure out if we do that again. All in all FedEx plus one, Walgreens minus one.
What’s Next?
We continue another 5 hours north into Alabama to Lake Guntersville State Park for two weeks, where we will be attending the RV Entrepreneurs Summit and meet up with some friends for a month.
| Campground | Cotton Hill Campground
|
| Nights Stayed | 6: March 10-15, 2019 |
| Parking Site | Site 92 W/E/S 50-Amp, approximately $13/night with the Agency Access Pass |
| Restaurants | Phil's BBQ in 534 S Randolph Ave 534 S Randolph Ave, Eufaula, AL 36027 |
| Local News | |
| Attractions | Army Corp of Engineers parks all around the lakes. There are numerous places to spend the day. |
| WELS Churches | |
| Remember for Next Time | The gate to the campground is only open from 7AM to 10PM (Eastern) daily |
| AT&T Coverage | Marginal even with the Weboost, latency was high from time to time. This was definitely impacted by load, the network was fine for evening personal use. Down 5.44 Up 4.92 Ping 160.52 Jitter 51.50 Antenna No Boosted Yes |
| Verizon Coverage | Excellent with weboost and without too, latency was very low and it handled being loaded fine through out the week. Friday afternoon latency increased. Down 23.68 Up 5.62 Ping 158.15 Jitter 14.61 Antenna No Boosted No |
| WiFi Coverage | Not available |
| Anytime Fitness | |
| Mail Services | None - did not ask |
We tried the Walgreens thing to I, California. The site said it was a FedEx site, but we went and asked and they said its only a drop off site. I showed the guy where it said we could have packages delivered there. Basically Walgreens said, nope. Ugh!!
Our instance the website said both delivery and pick up! Morrow of both of our stories is that you need to check with the local store directly before you attempt to have your mail service deliver to them. We tried the post office and general delivery route too, that really was a big fiasco as well. The nice thing about Fedex is sometimes they even deliver directly to your camper at the RV park.