Camping in the Tombigbee National Forest

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Preparation and planning

As i'm sitting at work on Friday morning, I check weather.com and realize it's going to snow that night. After that sunk in , I did what any rational outdoorsman would do - I called my girlfriend and told her that we were going camping. It might be worth mentioning at this point that snow in Mississippi is exceptionally rare during the winter, but in March it's almost unheard of. After kicking it around we decided to go and started making preparations. I had a Eureka backpacking tent that I purchased in Colorado and a good mummy bag but not much else; I rushed off to Academy to fill the void and about 110 dollars later, we were set for a good winter camping trip. The camping spot we selected was Choctaw Lake in the Tombigbee National Forest just south of Ackerman, MS. I chose this spot because it had an extensive network of trails very close to the campground for some good day hiking.

Friday Night

We ended up driving separately so I could get to the campground sooner to pitch the tent before daylight expired. After driving north on Highway 25 like a bat outta hell for about an hour and a half, I reached the Choctaw Lake campground and hurriedly grabbed a fee envelope to make the ranger-types happy. I cruised around the campground to find a good site for the tent. Suprisingly, there were very few tent sites as compared to the vast number of RV camping spots. I finally came across the gravel tent pads and proceeded to get out my tarp and tent. The tent I used is a 2 person Eureka backpacking tent that was manufactured for Galyan's Trading Company (which was bought out by Dick's SPorting Goods a few years ago). Since it was a 2 pole dome tent, I had it up in short order despite the light rain mixed with snow falling around me. Here comes mistake number one- since I have never camped with this tent, I never paid much attention to how the rainfly is positioned over the dome. I figured it didn't matter which way the vestibules faced in my rush to have the tent ready by the time my girlfriend Mandy arrived and the last speck of daylight disappeared. Wrong! It didn't end up making a huge difference with respect to the weather, however putting the fly on backwards caused the vestibule doors to be mismatched with the tent doors resulting in a very rousing game of twister to enter the tent. Next I had to figure out how to get the full sized air mattress through a much smaller tent door. I ended up under inflating the mattress slightly which gave me the necessary room to squeeze it through. Things were starting to shape up (and the snow was falling harder) as i put a cotton blanket over the mattress and ran the extension cord for the portable heater I brought. Needless to say I don't subscribe to the theory that going camping means you have to be miserable the whole time...that's what backpacking is for. Mandy finally arrived about an hour and a half later after wandering all over the park in search of our campsite since she couldn't call me. Cell service was very marginal and occasional text messages were possible if you stood on the picnic table while waving your phone to capture a tiny fraction of a signal. We completed outfitting the tent with sleeping bags and our personal gear before settling into a nice dinner of MREs. I almost screwed up and ate my spaghetti with meat sauce before i realized that it was still lent. Luckily Mandy had cheese tortellini and swapped with me. The highlight of my night was witnessing Mandy sprinting to the nearby bathrooms and then sprinting back because it was "scary" outside which led to the conclusion there might be axe murderers on the loose. We finally settled in for some well deserved rest. After some fitful sleep on both our parts, we fell asleep to the sound of the snow and ice pelting our tent in the early hours of the morning.

Saturday - Hiking Day

We awoke shortly after daybreak to a beautiful blanket of snow on the ground and the sun shimmering on the lake. We decided to sleep a while longer and then tore ourselves from the warmth of our tent and sleeping bags to see what mother nature had prepared on her canvas that morning. We walked around the lake and out to a small gazebo on the water to get a better glimpse of the snow. The view across the water and the surrounding snow was magnificent. The snow was already starting to melt a bit despite some frigid temperatures. After walking back to the campsite we decided to fire up the stove and cook some breakfast. Enter camping mistake number two - never buy freeze dried huevos rancheros for breakfast. After scorching our breakfast (as I write this, the pot still needs to be scoured) and nearly gagging on the results, we opted for pretzels and other assorted munchies to quiet the hunger pangs. The ranger stopped by to get our car tags and let us know that the camping fees had gone up to 20 buck a night. After breakfast, we started making our preparations to go hiking in the Noxubee Hills to the southeast. The trailheads are across Choctaw Lake and we drove around to that side of the park to start the day's hiking adventures. The Noxubee Hills trail system is a series of multi-use (hiker, mountain bike, atv) trails that span about 27 miles and run through the Noxubee hill country. After grabbing our packs and checking our gear, Mandy and I set off on the Beaver Lodge Trail to get the the North Trail. The Beaver Lodge Trail was relatively flat with a few ups and downs but still very scenic in early March as everything was preparing to bloom. We had to crossed a few roads, bridges and some scenic streams before getting to the the start of the North trail. The North Trail was much steeper than the previous trails and it took its toll quickly. Mandy's knee started hurting so we decided to turn around since we still had roughly 3 miles or so left to get back to the trailhead. We made it back to where the Beaver Lodge Trail meets Walker Woods dirt road and I decided to take the wide flat road instead if the trail back to alleviate some of the stress on Mandy's knee. This proved to be a huge mistake since the road followed a ridge line (as opposed to the trail which was in a valley) and went up and down repeatedly. The road didn't come out quite where I thought it did and we had another quarter of a mile before we got back to the start. We climbed into my Explorer and sank into our seats, thankful that we didn't have to use our legs anymore to get where we were going.

Saturday

evening

We headed into the closest town, which was Ackerman (population 1,696), and grabbed some lunch at Bumpers Drive-In. You don't realize how much you appreciate conveniences that civilization has to offer like fast food until you deprive yourself of them. At the same time, you appreciate that meal much more than you did 24 hours before. After our tasty meal, we dropped into Fred's discount store to grab some goodies and stuff to make smores. We walked up and down the aisles, stopping to play with everything as if we hadn't been in civilization for months. We purchased our treasure trove of food and added a crank powered radio that I just HAD to have. We left Ackerman and drove the five miles back to the campground and prepared to make dinner. It was about that time that we realized we would need wood for our campfire. We found some dry wood off of a trail not far from our tent and lugged it all back to the fire pit at our campsite. It was then we realized that we would need and axe as none of the wood would fit into the fire ring without being cut. This would require a trip to Louisville where the closest Wal-Mart was located. We did manage to find a small camp axe at Wal-Mart along with a cool lantern and a bunch of other stuff we didn't really need and once more headed back to the campground. It was almost dark when we got back and started the process of chopping the wood. One thing we didn't anticipate was how loud the axe would be in the relatively quiet campground. After taking turns laboring away at one log for the better part of 30 minutes we finally cut the wood in two and woke up the whole campground with the echoing thud of our axe. The next three hours were a lesson in how NOT to build a campfire. We tried every arrangement possible and finally got a great fire going but i'm sure we could have done so with much less effort. We broke out the stove again and had some spaghetti which turned out to be much better than our burnt breakfast that morning. Mandy made some smores and we sat around the warmth of the campfire while taking in the night sky which turned out to be clear and offered a great opportunity for stargazing. Armed with our portable heater, we once again retired to our cozy little tent and slept much more soundly than the night before-it's funny how a long day of hiking will do that to ya.

Sunday morning- breaking camp

We awoke to a gorgeous Sunday morning after sleeping in late and made some camp coffee. We broke camp, hopped in Mandy's car and headed to Starkville to grab some lunch at the Bulldog Cafe with her friend Matt who lives there. After a tour of Starkville and the Mississippi State University campus, we headed back down to the campsite and picked up my SUV. All in all it was a great adventurous weekend and we left ready to do it all over.

For more information on the Choctaw Lake recreation Area or Noxubee Hills please visit

http://www.fs.fed.us/r8/mississippi/tombigbee/recreation/

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Photos

Campsite
Our campsite on Choctaw Lake

Snow!
Look at all the Mississippi snow!

No footsteps
The gazebo on Choctaw lake with untouched snow.

Stopping for a pic
Mandy and I on the North trail

The neverending uphill road
This road turned out to be a lot tougher than we thought it would be.

Noxubee Hills Trail Map
This is the official trail map from the park service.