Meandering through Mississippi

Saturday, April 10th;

We have had long days since we left the Monahans Sandhills. We were up and out by 7:15 that morning and drove until we were just outside Fort Worth. Our goal was to be up really early and beat the traffic through the city the following day.

You can’t beat the traffic through the city - it never stops! We did get a jump on rush hour. We started at 6:15 AM and arrived at the far side of Dallas about 8:00 AM. We still remember hitting rush hour while passing through those two cities on our first trip. We were inexperienced and the trailer was not so easy to manage with our first truck. It was a relief to have that part of the trip over.

We stopped for breakfast at a Cracker Barrel in Tyler, Texas and then went on to a rest stop for Dan to have a nap. Refreshed we carried on until later in the day and stopped at last in West Monroe, Louisiana.

Again it was just a Highway RV Park and there was nothing notable to do. We did decide to take it easy for the remainder of the trip and divided the distance into three more days.

Today we got up in a more leisurely manner. Had breakfast, cleaned up and went off into West Monroe to do some banking. There was no one around at 9:30 in the morning so we were soon done and on our way east again.

I was sad to see the rest stop on the Louisiana side of the Mississippi was closed. We had stopped there in 2001 and a black gentleman was the caretaker. He introduced himself and spent time telling me about his job and how proud he was to keep this lovely place up. He gave us advice on what to do in the event of a hurricane, wished us a good journey and to keep safe. I enjoyed our visit.

Now the rest stop is in sad repair. Grass is growing through the pavement. The picnic shelters and tables are greying. It will take some work to bring it back to the pristine place it once was. More important, what happened to the man who welcomed us so warmly?

On the Mississippi side of the river, the Information center is a gracious as I remembered. I took pictures of the bridges across the river and read some of the history of Vicksburg, a very central player in the American Civil War.

Once again I made the mistake of passing a rest stop because we had just had a break. There were no more! We arrived at Jackson and turned south on Highway 49. We finally stopped for lunch at the D’Lo Waterpark. Not a Canadian style waterpark with waterslides and swimming pools but a forest park by the water. In this case the water was actually recognizable. It was the rocky river’s edge where the Sibyls played and the man became a frog in the movie “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” That was an interesting surprise.


We carried on after lunch and ended our day outside of Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Tomorrow we will go on to De Funiak Springs in the Florida Panhandle and the Monday we should be in the Orlando area.