From a Saloon in Tuscumbia to a Unique Cemetery in Cherokee

Saturday, 9 February
Camp Tiffin — Red Bay, Alabama
Temps: Lo 32F / Hi 61F (0C / 16C)

Yay!  The weekend is here.  After a successful week in the service bays of the Allegro Tiffin Service Center, we were ready for a change of pace.

(The map shows our stops — from Red Bay to Muscle Shoals, to Florence, to Tuscumbia, and finally, to Cherokee.)

With a nice day forecasted, we headed out of dodge after breakfast.  First on the agenda were a couple of errands.  We were going to drive to Tupelo, Mississippi, but a couple of the guys who worked on our coach this week suggested that Muscle Shoals and Florence would do just as well.  They were right.

The 40-mile (64 km) drive was uneventful, and we found what we were looking for — namely, a Lowe’s and a Radioshack store.  With errands successfully concluded, we decided to have lunch at a place suggested by one of our readers — The Rattlesnake Saloon.  Had we realized that the saloon was not in Tuscumbia proper, we would have stopped to visit the Helen Keller Museum first.  Next time.

Welcome to the Seven Springs Lodge and the Rattlesnake Saloon!

When we turned off Hwy 247 into what looked like a horse ranch, we wondered if Ms GPS had led us astray.  But no, we were in the right place.  We parked the car and took the ‘taxi’ down a steep, heavily pot-holed muddy road.  I neglected to take a photo, but trust me when I say you really don’t want to drive your own vehicle down to the saloon.

Not what we expected when we were told to wait for the ‘taxi’.

The saloon describes itself as “the watering hole under the rock.”  From what we’ve since read, it’s a happening kind of place after 5:00p when they start serving beer and there’s live local music.  We were there around 1:00p, and while it was busy, there were plenty of empty tables inside and no one was sitting at the tables under the rock.

The description of a “watering hole under the rock” is apropos.

Appropriately, patrons are greeted at the door by a pair of rattlesnake wood carvings.

We each ordered a burger — a Rustler for me, and the DUKE for Mui.  The latter is served with bacon and snake eyes (fried sliced jalapeno peppers).  I’m not much for burgers, because they are often not cooked well enough for me; but these burgers were tasty and cooked exactly to order.  The fries and onion rings that came with our burgers were perfectly crisped.  It was all too much food though, so next time we would split a burger and a salad.  We wrapped up our meal with an order of fried cheesecake, which was more like a custard-filled cannoli with both ends sealed.

Fried Cheesecake

After lunch, we walked the short distance to the lake.  The perimeter is fenced to keep the deer off the property.  Otherwise, they are free to roam.  It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the deer have been handfed.  As soon as they saw us coming, they approached the fence and stuck their snouts out the mesh for handouts.  Sorry, guys; we don’t feed wildlife.

It’s the humans that are fenced in here; the deer are free to roam on the other side.

The deer came so close that it was difficult to get good pictures through the fence.

Instead of taking the taxi back up to the parking lot, we walked up the steep but short road.  We were rewarded with glimpses of the lake through the trees.

The view is probably hidden when the trees are leafed out.

The Rattlesnake Saloon is on the grounds of the Seven Springs Lodge (or maybe it’s the other way around).  So, when we arrived at the top, we took a few moments to check out the property, which is set in a natural woodland area.  We learned that they have 50+ water and electric sites for campers and trailers.  From the looks of it, the place is popular with horse people who can take advantage of the stalls on the grounds to stable their horses.  In fact, we only saw horse trailers here today.  They do have a couple of unique rooms here as well — if you’ve ever yearned to sleep in a grain bin, this is the place to come.

Two of the three silos are sleeping rooms that can accommodate 6-8 people;
shared restrooms are in the middle silo (the one in the foreground in the picture on the right).

On our way home, we detoured to the Key Underwood Coon Dog Cemetery in Cherokee.  This memorial graveyard was inadvertently established when Key Underwood buried Troop, his coon dog, at a favorite hunting camp in the wilderness of Freedom Hills.

Comparisons of coon dogs began and ended with Troop.  He was “cold nosed,”
meaning he could follow cold coon tracks until they grew fresh,
and “he never left the trail until he had treed the coon.”

After Key Underwood buried Troop here, other coon dog owners started to bury
their dogs here as well.  And thus this one-of-a-kind cemetery was established.

The brochure we picked up at the cemetery describes a coon dog as “a hunting hound specially trained to hunt raccoons,” and goes on to say that “coon hunting is an American sport dating from Colonial days and is done at night.”

All of the 200+ dogs at this cemetery are coon dogs; no other breeds are allowed to be buried here.  Per the brochure, there are three requirements that must be met to qualify for burial:

• The owner must claim the dog is an authentic coonhound
• A witness must declare the deceased is a coon dog
• A member of the local coon hunter’s organization must be allowed to view the coonhound and declare it as such

Headstones are crafted from a variety of material, including wood, sheet metal, and stone.

Some of the headstones that caught my eye; one owner even left some “dog treats”
and decorated the gravesite of his dog with a small Christmas tree.

That we had an interesting day goes without saying.  I’m glad we took today to explore the area.  The forecast for Sunday calls for rain … and a lot of it.