Home from the South

Our last campground was in Oak Mountain State Park, about 15 miles south of Birmingham, Alabama. This is a huge park, 10,000 acres, with lots to do.
We hiked, saw Peavine Falls and saw the raptors at the rehabilitation center including a rare white vulture.
The birds live in large cages in the woods along a boardwalk. A description for each bird explains why it can’t be released back into the wild.
The next day we drove over 300 miles to Greenville, South Carolina and spent the night in WalMart. We went inside to get permission, and the assistant manager said with a smile, “We welcome you guys.”

It took us about five hours to get home from there. It was a sunny day in the 70’s. All went well until we got near Charlotte where there was roadwork. The two-lane highway turned into one lane and traffic slowed to a crawl. Once we got through, it was smooth sailing. We needed gas, but the prices were so high, we kept pushing ahead, trying to find a cheaper option. There were none, and by the time we got home, we had only six miles of gas left. Talk about cutting it close. All in all we spent as much money on gas on this trip as everything else combined.
We arrived home April 14th, 49 days after we had left and 6,315 miles. (We were gone 50 days on our previous trip to the Maritimes and drove 6,921 miles.) Check back in June when we head to Alaska.

The Natchez Trace, Vicksburg and a Bloody Finger

We spent three days exploring the Natchez Trace Parkway from Natchez, Mississippi to Tupelo. It goes all the way to Nashville, but we didn’t get that far this trip. We met several happy people who had driven the entire 444 miles. Spring and fall are the times to go.
The grass was green, the meadows were full of flowers, and the trees were showing off their new clothes. Mix in a little sunshine and warmth, and it’s a formula for a great trip.
Like other National Park parkways, there is no development on the Trace and little to mar its historic ambiance.

We stopped at all the markers and learned about the Mississippian Mound cultures who once lived here.

In the early 1800’s, traders boated their goods down the river and then spent weeks walking back along the trace because their boats couldn’t go upriver. (That stopped once steam paddle boats were invented.)

Most of the stops entailed reading a descriptive plaque. Some had short walks to see the original trace, a cemetery, a natural feature or other point of interest. We got off the parkway and drove several miles to see the Windsor ruins. It had been a palatial antebellum home that survived the Civil War and then was burned down in 1890 because of a careless smoker.
We stayed in Natchez State Park and visited some of the sights in Natchez, which has a number of antebellum homes you can visit and is just a pleasant town to see.
After a day in Natchez and a day on the parkway, we deviated west to Vicksburg, whose main claim to fame is Vicksburg Military Park.

The park does a great job interpreting this Civil War battle and is much like Gettysburg, just not as big. At each of the 15 stops along the 17-mile driving tour, there are blue signs explaining where the Union troops were situated and red signs showing where the Confederates were.

There are statues and monuments, an excellent visitor’s center, the partially-reconstructed USS Cairo, (a gunboat that had been sunk in the Yazoo river in 1862 and raised in 1964), and a cemetery where thousands, mostly unnamed, are buried.
We listened to the cell phone tour as we drove. My favorite story was at stop #12, where Union soldiers charged a Texan regiment. Thomas Higgins, a color bearer from Illinois, sprinted across a field, bullets whizzing all around him. He scaled the wall of the lunette only to find himself surrounded by Texans. They were amazed at his bravery and luck and shook his hand!

Across the train tracks downtown and beside the river is a line of delightful murals painted on the flood wall. They depict the entire history of the area. We took a quick look at the outside of the old courthouse, now a museum, which survived the Civil War because the confederates kept Union soldiers there so the Union wouldn’t bomb the building. We returned to our campground where, it seemed, all the other RV’ers were walking their dogs. Most have one or two small ones. A few have big dogs.

The following day we drove to Jackson to pick up where we had stopped along the Natchez parkway. A short section of the highway was rough and bumpy. When we got to our campground and opened the door, we found that the pantry door had opened and spilled its contents onto the floor. Cans and bottles must have been pushing against it. What a mess! Streams of oil and vinegar were running across the floor. A big puddle of salsa verde was in the middle of it. Cans were rolling about. Broken glass was everywhere. I started to open the slide, and the wood panel beneath the sofa split because things were jammed behind it. We started to clean up. I was standing at the sink, washing off cans. David was on his hands and knees, picking up bottles and pieces of glass. He put a bottle of vinegar on the floor near me and said it had spilled everywhere.
 It was more than half full. I leaned down to pick it up so I wouldn’t knock it over, not realizing that it was broken. When I tried to pick it up, the sharp, jagged top of the narrow-necked bottle came off, and my middle finger was sliced open by the bottom part as it slid out of my hand. I thought I had cut off my finger. I stood holding my finger together and screamed. I kept screaming. David told me to stop screaming and to show him my finger. I stopped screaming but didn’t want to stop pressing the two pieces of my fingers together so that I could keep them aligned and also to stop the bleeding.
We wrapped the finger with gauze and electric tape and continued cleaning up. Then we went to Kroger to get some Spic ‘n Span, salsa verde and some better bandages. The baker was putting out some big, beautifully-decorated cakes in a display case. I had never seen such lavishly-decorated cakes in a grocery store. “Did you make these yourself?” I asked him. “Yes, I did” he said. Evidently he used to make wedding cakes. By the time we had lunch and finished cleaning up, it was late, so we went on a 3-mile walk in the park and missed the sights in Jackson.
That evening we changed the bandage and determined that although it was a long, deep gash, my finger was still connected.

The next day we continued along the parkway, taking the trailer with us this time. This section of the parkway had more traffic and the parking pull-offs weren’t as accommodating for RVs, but it was still better than having to backtrack. Also it was very hot, and since we had the cats with us, we couldn’t leave them for long at any time.

Mostly the trails were short, and sometimes we just took turns. Many of the stops explained the ecology of the area or the history of the Choctaws and the settlers. That night David wanted to stay at WalMart so we could run our noisy generator but the closest one was 20 miles away, so instead, we stayed at the free parkway campground. It’s April 9th and unseasonably hot (over 90) and humid. The small campground was full, but we found a spot in the picnic area and spent a hot night with no a/c.
On our third day on the parkway, we continued on to Tupelo. It was just as scenic but not as flat. We got off a couple times. Once to see some Indian mounds managed by Tombigbee National Forest and another to see the Tupelo National Battlefield. It was a shock to get off the parkway in Tupelo and find ourselves on a busy road lined with strip malls and loud traffic.
The site of the battlefield was a patch of grass on a busy corner and had two canons, a couple small monuments and a sign explaining the battle.

We were relieved to get back on the parkway. If only more roads could be like this!

A Few Disappointments in Louisiana

David felt enervated and tired this morning but better than yesterday. Fortunately we didn’t have far to go and got to our next campground, Ajax Country Livin’ RV Park, around 11. The office was closed, but information was posted so that we could pick a site and pay. The campground was a large gravel lot on a slope with some grass and a few trees. We picked the most level site. I got an envelope from the porch and paid for two nights. After we set up and had lunch, we drove to Natchitoches (“Nakatish”), a pleasant little town on a river with a 33-block National Historic Landmark District.

We drove around. I got out and took photos of buildings and churches while David stayed in the car, resting. Then we went to WalMart and returned to the campground where we did our laundry. Most of the people there were temporary workers and had two trucks as well a camper. We had seen a lot of huge pipelines being assembled and buried in various locations and assumed these workers were here for that, especially since many of them seemed to have welding equipment. David overheard one of the workers wonder where he was going to park his truck now that we were in our campsite.

We were eating dinner when there was a knock on the door, around 7:30. A woman stood there and demanded to see my discount card, although I had written down the number already. I showed her the card. Then she insisted we pay more money, because we were in a 50-amp site. We explained we were plugged in to the 30-amp receptacle, not the 50-amp receptacle. She insisted that the instructions clearly stated that 50-amps were more. But we’re not using 50 amps, we said. She said we could move to another site that had only a 30-amp receptacle. In the dozens of campgrounds we’ve stayed at, we’ve never encountered this situation. In every other campground that had 30/50 amp sites, you pay for whatever amperage you use. David said we would move to a 30-amp only site. Later he decided he was too tired, so we decided to pay the ransom and leave the next day instead of staying two nights. It wasn’t the amount of money, but the principle and the woman’s attitude. Besides, the campground was marginal anyway.

The next day David was feeling better. We went to Cotile Lake Recreation Area in Boyce. It’s a big park with lots of trees on a pretty good-sized lake. The campsites have concrete pads and concrete picnic tables and power that would be hard to reach without an extension cord. We got a really nice spot overlooking the lake and woods. As I was walking backwards, directing David into the site, I tripped over a brick, stumbled and fell, hurting my leg. I screamed as I fell and lay on the ground moaning, rubbing my leg. David got out of the truck and told me to get up before the cavalry got there. A woman and her small dog were headed my way. She asked me if I was okay. I told her I was fine, just a little bruised. Then she told me some big weather was coming, and they were getting ready to leave. We checked the weather. It was going to rain later in the day.

The "vista"

After lunch, we left to drive on the 17-mile Longleaf Trail Scenic Byway through another part of the Kisatchie National forest. Louisiana has only one national forest, but it’s divided into five sections in the state. The sky was grey and threatening. It looked like it could rain any moment. The photocopied brochure I had delineated 14 stops. The first stop was an overlook. It didn’t really overlook much. Next was Longleaf Vista where there was a nature trail and some outdoor plaques. We started walking on the nature trail. There was thunder; it got darker and started to rain, so we turned back. The forest here is mainly a longleaf pine sandhills-type habitat, different from other habitats we’ve seen in LA. We tried to find the other stops on the map, but either they weren’t well-marked or weren’t marked at all and, except for a tree used by woodpeckers, we missed them all. We drove down one dirt road to see vistas and the “little Grand Canyon”, but all you could see were trees and forest. No vistas and no canyon view. Except for the nature trail, it seemed like the rest of the scenic byway stops were a stretch. The entire forest had been logged and what we were seeing was “second” growth, as are many if not most forests in the south. Although the drive was somewhat disappointing, if we hadn’t done it, we would have wondered what we had missed.

The rain had stopped, so we headed to Oakley Plantation, part of the Cane River Creole National Historical Park. It had gotten down to the low 50’s. A big wind and rain had just come through and knocked out their power, so they couldn’t allow us in the house. We walked around the grounds a little, but then it started pouring rain, so we decided to head back and skip our final stop at another plantation.

Indoor Culture, Outdoor Adventure

We said goodbye to Texas and returned to Louisiana to see some of the places we had missed. In Shreveport we visited the Louisiana State Exhibit museum, which has a huge fresco at the entrance,
a big relief floormap of the entire state, 22 meticulously-crafted dioramas depicting various aspects of LA culture, such as agriculture, mining and oil drilling,

and paintings of local scenes.
Well worth a visit.
The R.W. Norton Art Gallery is located in a beautiful neighborhood and surrounded by gardens blooming with azaleas. The museum itself is fabulous and included some of my favorites--Remington, Russell and Hudson River artists--as well as an eclectic sample from a variety of artists.

Downtown, along the muddy Red River, is a row of huge steel roses and tulips and a park with mosaic picnic tables, a fountain and a small garden.
After partaking of the culture in town, we headed to the woods. We missed the final turn into the Kisatchie National Forest and turned around in a dirt road. This entailed backing the trailer into a side dirt road with a big dip. The casters did their job but sank in a little. The campground in the forest was nice enough, but our campsite was beside a rowdy group that stayed up until 3 a.m. playing country music and yelling obscenities.
We were only here a day, otherwise we would have moved to another campsite the next day. It was a beautiful day--warm, sunny, low humidity, little wind.

Our plan was to bike the Sugar Cane National Recreation Trail. The trail map we got from the camp hosts was hard to decipher and had no information about length or difficulty. The camp host said we could pick up the bike trail at the boat ramp. So we biked to the boat ramp, saw some trails and picked one. We knew we needed to cross the lake and eventually found a trail across the dam. The trail was supposed to split immediately into two, one for biking, one for hiking.
We didn’t see the split and didn’t see a sign, so just kept biking. David went on ahead. We encountered several unidentified forks in the trail and no other people. He ended up on the bike trail. I ended up staying closer to the lake, which was flatter. The entire time we never saw a sign or map, but there were red and white triangle marks on trees. The hiking trail I was on was rough with roots and rocks. I had to go slow and get off several times to navigate obstacles. The trail David was on was narrow, unmaintained, steep and difficult. It was impossible to tell what lay ahead of us, but according to the “map”, we should eventually come to a road.

After what I thought might be half-way, I called David on the walkie-talkie and told him I was going to continue all the way and not turn around. “But you don’t know what’s in front of you,” he said. “Yes, but I know what’s behind me, and I’d rather go ahead. I’ll take my chances.” Since my section of the trail was shorter, I ended up ahead of him. He caught up when the two trails merged. The final stretch of the trail was relatively easy.

Better yet, after an hour and a half (about six miles for me), we found ourselves back at the campsite. Although parts of the trail were rough, it was fun. “I’m going to go around again," said David, “but I’m going to stay on the hiking trail this time.” It took him less than an hour the second time since he knew the way and didn’t have to stop. When he got back, he was hot and very tired.

He said he had had a headache for several days and now had a stomachache. Neptune had a pretty bad asthma attack this night.