We live in Alabama, and although we are smack in the middle of Football season, we still manage to find some Saturdays when the weather is nice to get outside and explore.

Also, Jango is 11 months old. She’s a Feist terrier, and she was bred to hunt squirrels. Shannon has been watching her tree squirrels in the yard and wanted to get her out in the woods and let her do her thing.

Shannon has been telling me about an old Lodge he used to know about as a kid called the Skyway lodge. It burned down in the 80’s, and has become something of a ghost lodge, buried deep in the woods. We decided to go and look for it

We drove to Coleman Lake, which is near a campground Shannon grew up going to with his family. He remembers his father and the other men going up to the lodge at night. The children were not allowed to go. One night back in the 70’s a man rode a horse into the dining hall and shot a gun up in the air. Pretty sure alcohol was involved.

We started hiking around looking for it and Jango started hunting.

We came up on a cool old Church with an old graveyard from the 1800’s

Right after this, Jango treed a squirrel. Well- that’s not quite right…. She smelled one and circled the base of the tree where she tracked the scent. Shannon looked up and spotted it. He wanted Jango to see it before he shot it down. Part of puppy hunter training. She didn’t ever see it this time. She’ll get there.

We were walking down an old road, thick forest all around, and i heard Shannon’s footsteps in the leaves off to my right. Then heard him say “ there it is”. Again….. he has bionic supersonic vision. There’s absolutely no way I’d ever have seen it.

There is a Cleburn news page on Facebook where people have posted a lot about the lodge. It seems to be your typical deep woods country kitchen, bar and convenience store with a bit of lodging.

It was a beautiful day to be outside and a fun adventure!