Thursday, May 22, 2014

Choctaw Lake at Tombigbee National Forest

After a long day of driving, to us that is over 250 miles, we finally arrived at our next destination near Ackerman, MS--Choctaw Lake.
  What a pleasant surprise when after we settled in to our site we found that we had good Internet.
 Then it was time for our customary toast! Cheers to Bob for finding this great site!
 We had reserved the site for 5 nights. After a little research, Bob found that there were over 700 geocaches within a 15 mile radius of our campsite! We took off in the car along a forest service road and found quite a few!
 Driving wasn't allowed on all the forest service roads so the next day we went hiking. The roads were shaded and most of the caches were not too far off the road in the woods. After about a 2.5 mile hike, we turned around and retraced our steps to our campsite.
Another day we drove into Starkville, home of Mississippi State University. Bob read a review of a Mexican restaurant that sounded like we needed to try it. He was right. We found Chili's in Starkville and sure enough there was a Mexican restaurant just next door. It was delish! I had shrimp enchiladas and Bob had a shrimp burrito. The filling in my enchiladas reminded me of Gengie's (my grandmother) shrimp gravy!

Of course with so many geocaches to be found we drove out of the park and along another forest service road where we could park and hike the closed road. We found most of the caches, but due to a controlled burn several years ago, a few of the caches were missing. We did spot this critter as we hiked.
Choctaw Lake has been a happening place since the 1930s when the CCC and WPA built the spillway. About 10  years ago, the forest service built a trail around Choctaw Lake. We hiked it several times as it was scenic and had some caches hidden along the way. This board walk is on the northwest side of the lake.
This is a view of the lake from near the pavilion.
We had a great time at Choctaw Lake and it is on our list of places to visit again as we travel to and from Arkansas.

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