Arkabutla, Mississippi

South Abutment Campground typical site

Arka who? We are at the Arkabutla Dam area, in one of three corps of engineer campgrounds here. It only took us 30 min. to get here from Tunica, Mississippi. We are staying at the South Abutment Campground, $9.00 a night with Eldy's senior pass. It would normally be $18.00 a night if you didn't have the pass. It's been recently renovated from old 20 amp electric to 50 in the last two years and everything about the sites at the campground looks really new--the picnic tables, the little white grilling tables, the cement or asphalt pads. The sites down by Arkabutla Lake are wide, roomy, beautiful, and they have grills with small white grilling tables right next to the picnic table. As a matter of fact, all the campground sites have these little white grill tables next to the BBQ grills. Isn't that a nice touch?! If you didn't want to be down at the lake where there are few trees, there are wonderful sites in the pine forest area. We are by ourselves at this end of the campground, overlooking the lake. It's a gray and dreary day so photos will have to wait till tomorrow when it's supposed to get sunny. Are you ready for this? There's a disc golf course here! Whoopee! That's on the agenda in a day or two after  the grounds dry out from today's steady rain.....There are some trails for walking here, and it's a nice area to ride around the grounds by bike...

These vines are covering up trees!

While driving here, we noticed an overabundance of a creeping style vine/bush type of plant. It's climbing everything and appears to be covering everything in its path...it looks very invasive and is an ugly brown in most places. I'm thinking the common name might be "creeping Charlie", (or is there such a thing as creeping Jenny?) I need to be politically correct here--but at any rate, not sure what the real name of the plant is...it's all over the place in Mississippi--climbing up telephone poles, trees, and fences and it is a VERY dense heavy cover.  Does anybody know the name of the plant? I'm very curious as to what it is....some of it is still very green but most of it looks ashy brown right now.
 

While we are on the subject of flora and fauna, here's a photo of a tree back in Tunica with interesting bark and berries. The leaves kind of look like elm leaves. Don't know the name of this tree, I'll have to get a tree I.D. book and start learning about that! Guess I should have been a geologist or an arborist--a tree specialist in my "other" career, as much as these things interest me now.....I never did that "find a million leaves and identify them" for a science class assignment when I was in grade school, so see what I missed out? I'll bet any 5th grader is smarter than me on this one! I doubt this tree on the left is in Indiana, but I could be wrong....well, see you tomorrow...it's going to be a great day, sunny and in the 60's...or so they say......