Family Visit & Eerily Empty Campground

 Natchez Trace - Wrangler Campground: about half way between Memphis and Nashville

It's finally stopped raining for a while. Things are still a little wet but drying out nicely. This campground is a State of Tennessee Campground in association with the Natchez Trace. The Trace is an old path dating back a few hundred years. The two ends of the trace are Nashville, Tennessee and Natchez, Mississippi. It has an interesting history and well worth exploring if you're passing through any part of it.

This is either north-east Mississippi or southern Tennessee. It was a pretty day until the rain started. It was a nice leisurely drive on pretty decent roads. On a day like this, someone I once knew, (may she RIP) would have repeated some of my old words back at me and say,,, "that sweet smell of freedom hanging heavy in the air". 

 

There were about 3 or 4 of those crosses at different spots along this leg of this trip. They were all about the same size so none were trying to outdo the others. I liked seeing them, I liked it a lot. 

I got lucky and found a Sam's Club along my route. It worked out well since I was getting low on coffee and protein shakes. These flowers were in Sam's but since I didn't know anyone around, I didn't get any. I thought about buying some just to give to the next single looking woman, but I didn't. That can be a dangerous thing. 

The campground is definitely an older campground with smaller campsites and narrow roads. I didn't need to worry about tight roads or curves since I was the only one in the campground. The campground is heavily wooded and while setting up camp the rain was starting and stopping but always with a steady drizzle. Combined, it gave an eerie feel to the place. It was not ideal conditions to be setting up camp. I tried to remember the name of the scary movie dealing with a campground, but now I'm glad I didn't remember it. Probably due to the rain, there were no birds chirping or any small animals making noise while playing in the trees. Then came a very loud thud off in the woods. At first, I thought it was a tree falling but changed my mind since there weren't any secondary sounds. When a tree falls in woods like this, you hear the tree breaking off branches of adjacent trees and such. This sound was just one loud thud, no echoes, no secondary sounds, no flushing of birds, etc. Just as if you stomped your foot on compacted ground but a thousand times louder. It kept my head on a swivel until I completed setting up camp.

This picture is from today as the ground and such was trying to dry up.

The look out the back window of Liberty. This is my view when I'm working on my laptop. There is a benefit of having the campground to myself, I don't have to lower my blinds.  

This was the campsite after getting the outside set up. Another camper showed up later in the evening and as I'm typing this post, there are four of us here now. 

My purpose for stopping here was to pay a visit to my Aunt (my Dad's brothers wife) and her daughter, my cousin. I hadn't seen either one for probably 20 years or so. I promised them I wouldn't take up too much of their time but had a few questions for my Aunt from some times before I was born. I won't go into what we talked about in this blog, but I will give some strongly worded advice. If you have questions of family members, you better ask them before it's too late. I would love to be able to sit down and visit with my parents to discuss their choices in life. To know the reasons why did something someway instead of another. What were their hopes, dreams and plans for their life? So many questions, but I was too dumb to ask them in the living years. My aunt provided some of those answers to me yesterday and I'll be forever grateful. 

Tomorrow is moving day and I'll be heading to a COE campground just east of Nashville. I'll be traveling on Interstate highway for the first time in a long time. I have a feeling it will be a good thinking drive.

Ya'll take care of each other. Maybe I'll Cya down the road. 

Just Watching it Rain

 Location: Blue Bluff Corps of Engineers Campground; Aberdeen, Mississippi (about 30 minutes south of Tupelo)

It's another great COE campground. This time on the banks of Aberdeen Lake which is part of the Tombigbee Waterway. The lock and dam are just a short distance away but there isn't any good vantage point for viewing them. This happens a lot more than it should. Large infrastructure projects like locks/dams and bridges should be shown off by the Federal or State governments. I don't want to hear about 9/11 being the reason because I've been to dozens and dozens of structures built before 9/11 and you can't get a good look at them. I know 9/11 made some changes but they weren't "open for business" before that. I know I've had to be careful in some places that I've visited where I would be taking pictures of a nice-looking, interesting bridge and get sideways looks from people in the area. If I hung around, I'm pretty sure the police would have shown up asking questions. I'll quit griping about that now. 

Anyway, this is a nice campground that I've just used to kicked back and relax. It's been raining on and off so exploration, even if there was some to explore around here, wouldn't have happened. The camp host told me they were full over the Easter weekend but are only about 10% this week. I didn't hook up Starlink because I would have had to use my tripod to get to a point where it could find the satellites and since my Verizon signal is strong, my hotspot is doing all the work. I have gotten lucky and had two average sunsets even with all the clouds. I don't really consider them actual sunsets, but they will do the job when you're starving for one.

This isn't a highway picture and definitely doesn't represent northeast Mississippi, but I liked it and hope she likes it for her travel picture. It is the road leading into the campground.

 

I got an excellent campsite right on the banks of the lake. I have a great view out my back window. This has definitely been a good vibe campground.

My view out the door of Liberty as sunset nears.

It's not the best sunset but it's the best I've had in a long time. I needed.

I have also used this down time to complete my campground reservations to get back to Louisiana on July 1st. That's a big relief and a big monkey removed from my back. Now I just have to check email often enough for any campground closures due to flooding, staff shortage, etc. I've already had to do that once on this trip when I campground in Kentucky had to close due to flooding. I was lucky to find a replacement on the same lake. 

This blog post has been a little boring but tomorrow is moving day and I'll be entering another state. Tennessee is next up on the list.

Ya'll take care of each other. Maybe I'll Cya down the road.

Happy Easter and My First Ever Thinking Bench

 Location: Jenning's Ferry Corps of Engineers Campground; about 40 minutes southwest of Tuscaloosa, Alabama on the banks of the Black Warrior River

First and foremost. Happy Easter. He's risen and the napkin was folded, meaning he'll be back. 

If you're unfamiliar about the napkin, here is the short version. In the bible, as John first sees the empty tomb of Jesus, he describes the linen cloth (napkin) that had been placed on the face of Jesus as he was laid in the tomb as being folded neatly and separate from the other burial items. The people of that time, especially the Jews, recognized the meaning. During meals, servants who set the table and served the food stood by as needed. If the master of the house crumpled his napkin and left it on the table, that meant he was finished with the meal and would not be back. This was the sign for the servants to begin cleaning up. BUT, if he folded the napkin neatly and placed it on the table, as it was in the tomb, it meant he was leaving the area for a little while but would return. Happy Easter Ya'll.

This campground was my first Corps of Engineers campground back in 2014 when I began full-timing. It was my third campground on my first trip. It was also the location of the first picture of a "thinking bench", ever. Geez,,,,I don't know how many thinking benches I've taken pictures of but it's got to be 200 to 300. Today is the third and final day here and I've yet to find that bench again. I'll take another walk this evening, but my hopes are not high about finding it. I guess it was removed and never replaced. This is one of the reasons why I don't like back-tracking to some places I've been in the past. You always run the chance of damaging a "silent echo" from the previous visit.

This is the picture of my very first "thinking bench" from April of 2014. I couldn't find it this time and that is sad. Anyway, this is the one that started all of them. 

This is my campsite. Too many trees for Starlink to work while attached to Liberty. I think I could have found an opening in the trees and mounted it on a tripod but since Verizon was giving me a reliable signal, it wasn't worth the effort. There isn't much around this area to explore but it is a very relaxing, good-vibe campground. 

Still fulfilling a promise. This is a stretch of road in west-central Alabama. She should have enough road pictures now to make an atlas but, I'll keep posting them.

The exploration for this visit was the Indian Mounds in Moundville, Alabama about 20 miles from here. They, and the Indian settlement that was part of it, is the second largest Mound Complex in North America. Second, only to Cahokia which is on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River by St. Louis. I visited that site back in July of 2021 and you can read about it here >>>>> https://gozatravels.blogspot.com/2021/07/valve-stems-and-cahokia.html

This is the best overall view of most of the complex. There are 29 mounds of all different sizes. They even had a thinking bench on this mound. I'm pretty sure it wasn't put there by the Native people from the 1600's.

This was a representation of someone's GUESS about the Natives at this site. They used a lot of weasel words in describing their suppositions (not to be confused with Preparation H). But, as usual, they never explain how they arrived at them. Hey, I'm only slightly jaded, but it seems I become more jaded as the years go by. 

I've been to several such mound complexes around the country and each one is a little different but with many similar things which means they were connected in some way. This place, like Cahokia, had a palisade wall surrounding the area. Building a palisade around the perimeter of an area this size is impressive by itself.

I don't feel up to getting deep into my thoughts on the Native Americans and the mound builders from 500 to 1,000 years ago. Maybe that deserves a post on its own. 

Tomorrow is moving day and I'll be headed about 100 miles northwest of here to another COE campground, but this time in Mississippi.   

Ya'll take care of each other. Maybe, I'll Cya down the road  

Contrasting Campgrounds & "To Kill A Mockingbird"

 Isacc Creek Campground (COE); near Monroeville, Alabama

One of the great things about traveling around is seeing the change in landscape. The travel distance to this campground was only about 120 miles, but what a change. In the morning, I pulled out of my campsite and drove along the sandy beach of the Gulf of America. By early afternoon, I was camped in the southern hill country along the banks of the Alabama River. 

Leaving Fort Pickens Campground. The Gulf of America is on the other side of the sand on the right.

My campsite at Isaac Creek Campground. That's the Alabama River in the background.

Looking out my door in the morning at the Alabama River with "smoke on the waters". 

I found two thinking benches just downstream of the dam. 

I don't know the exact number, but I would estimate that I've camped in a little over 100 different Corps of Engineers (COE) campgrounds since I started traveling 11 years ago. (By the way, that 11 year anniversary was 3 days ago.) This campground is the only one where the campground host texted me on the morning of my arrival telling me my campsite was ready. With the new fad of later and later check-in times, it was good knowing I could show up anytime that day. I found her supervisor and praised her actions to him. He smiled and said, "Yep, that's Kathy". Another thing happened that was uncommon. The people in the adjacent campsite had some of their family visiting and were cooking burgers and such on the grill. The mother of the bunch came over and offered me some burgers and tator salad. That is only the second time in my travels and with stays in over 400 campgrounds (all types) that I've been offered food by a neighbor. The first and only other time was when I was camped at Foscue Campground (COE) at Demopolis, Alabama (couple hours north of here). Southern hospitality at its finest. 

Thinking of Southern Hospitality reminds me of one of the very first full-time RV'ers blogs that I used to follow before I started traveling. It was the Wandering Wishnies. They were an older couple from Wisconsin who, on a whim, sold everything and bought their first RV and hit the road. They hadn't been down south before so they weren't familiar with the southern way of life, only the stereotypical versions of rednecks. She was the writer of their blog and through her words, she showed us how she and he became enlightened and realized they had been deceived over the years. I can remember some of her words as being "The people here in the south are truly friendly and polite and not just putting on." After many years of traveling, they sold the RV and settled down, in Arizona I believe. Oh well, I hadn't thought of them in a long time. I may go back and re-read some of her old blog posts. That is the wonder of blogs, being able to see things/places/people through the eyes of other people. Cue the melancholy music :)

This is the unusual dam I wanted to see. There wasn't a good place to get a good view. You can see the six gates but to the right of them is a "fixed crest spillway". Except in flooding situations, you can't raise the upstream water level any higher than the elevation of that spillway. You can lower it by using the gates, but not raise it. Of all the dams I've seen, I haven't seen this combination.  

I got this picture off of Google Earth,,,,yeah, yeah, copywrite infringement, I know. It gives a bird's eye view of the dam structure. They must have been in a flooding situation since all gate are open. 

Besides coming here to see this unique lock and dam near the campground, I came here to visit the Monroeville Courthouse Museum. Monroeville is the hometown of Harper Lee and Truman Capote. They grew up together as neighbors and childhood friends. For those younger readers, Harper Lee wrote the book "To Kill A Mockingbird" which was also made into a movie starring Gregory Peck. In recent years, some misguided people have tried to have the book banned from schools and libraries because they think it is a racist novel. I don't think it is and just by showing how life was in the 30's in the deep south doesn't make it racist. Miss Lee addressed the subject herself in an interview from 1961. She said "My book had a universal theme. It's not a 'racial' novel. It portrays an aspect of civilization----not necessarily Southern civilization. I tried to show the conflict of the human soul----reduced to its simplest terms". 

If you've seen the movie you probably recognize this courtroom. Many people think the movie was shot here, but it wasn't. Hollywood took lots of measurement and pictures to make an exact replica in Hollywood. It was still kind of neat seeing the real thing.

It's also kind of neat that Miss Lee and Truman Capote grew up together in such a small town. Truman himself was an author of several books. The best known, for me, was "Breakfast at Tiffany's". The other connection between the two authors was the character, Dill Harris, in Mockingbird. It was inspired by Truman Capote as a child. Oh well, the things we see and learn along the way.

Tomorrow is moving day and I'll be headed another 100 miles or so north to another COE campground. 

Ya'll take care of each other. Maybe I'll Cya down the road. 

Fort Pickens Area Wrap-up

 Fort Pickens National Seashore Campground; on barrier island across the bay from Pensacola, Florida

Today is day 5 of 5 and tomorrow is moving day. Five days at a campground is unusual for me when I'm traveling although checking my future reservations it will happen a few more times before I get back to Louisiana in July. Hmmmm, I need to think on that some. This campground and area have been on my "list of places" to explore for several years and I'm glad I was able to make it this time. I'll probably not be back. Those two sentences sure sound contradictory, don't they? The reason being, I've seen what I needed to see on this barrier island and although there are more things to see on the mainland, it is just too far and too much traffic to explore from this campground. As summer gets nearer and the tourist invasion happens it will just get more hectic. I'm glad I have Starlink which was reliable and had blazing speed. My Verizon signal varied in strength from 1 bar to 4 bars and was unpredictable. The location of the campsite was great as the view out my back window was interesting. I'm right at the entry point to the campground and have an excellent view of the tent camping area. This campground has a high number of walkers and bicyclists which are great for people watching. 

Yesterday's exploration was the actual Old Fort Pickens from the 1800's. Right off the bat, no bad ju-ju. A little on the good side of average ju-ju. After so many years in this ocean environment and numerous hurricanes, it is surprising the amount of original fort still remains after nearly 200 years. Fort Pickens and three other smaller forts were located near the entrance to Pensacola Bay around 1834. Their purpose was to defend and guard against invasion. The bay was the deepest port on the Northern Gulf coast and was home to the Navy Shipyards.

This map shows the importance of the Fort in defending Pensacola Bay

The first thing I found interesting about Fort Pickens was that Geronimo was held prisoner there. That's right, the Apache leader from the southwest. In 1886, 400 captured Apache were sent to Fort Marion at St. Augustine, Florida. However, for some reason that I haven't discovered, several citizens of Pensacola asked that Geronimo and 14 Apache men be transferred to Fort Pickens. These men were separated from their families who remained behind at Fort Marion. The families were eventually reunited with each other in 1887 at Fort PIckens. One year after that, all of them were transferred to Fort Sill in Oklahoma where Geronimo died in 1909. As a point of reference, the Trail of Tears which relocated the Five Civilized tribes to Oklahoma happened between 1830 and 1850.

This placard in the fort is what brought my attention to Geronimo. If I had heard about this before, I sure forgot about it. One of the benefits of forgetting things is that you get to "re-learn" them. 

The second thing I found interesting was what happened at the fort just before the War of Northern Aggression War for Southern Independance Civil War began. 

A quick timeline:

November 6, 1860; Lincoln wins election

December 20, 1860; South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the union.

January 10, 1861; Florida becomes the third state to secede from the union. Florida sends a "letter of understanding" to the current President, James Buchanan, saying "if Northern reinforcements stay away from the Pensacola forts then the militia would not attack the forts." This was the same type of message that South Carolina sent to Washington D.C. about Fort Sumter.

March 4, 1861; Lincoln is inaugurated.

Beginning of April of 1861 President Lincoln orders reinforcement to be sent to both Sumter and Pickens.

April 12, 1861; Reinforcements and supplies arrive at the forts, War begins, lasts 4 years with about 620,000 soldiers dead and an unknown number of civilians.

I won't go into matters of the Civil War since I've covered them in other posts when I visited Fort Sumter, Appomattox, Shiloh and many other Civil War sites. It was just interesting both forts were being reinforced on the same day, April 12, 1861 which prompted the beginning of the war.

Entry to Fort Pickens. Those appear to be the original columns. 

Gun emplacements 

Although I had a small flashback to visiting the Catacombs in Rome, there weren't any bad vibes for heebie jeebies

One of the inside cannons. All of the arch-work is because of the need for strength to absorb return fire

 

A larger cannon up top and in the open. That is the Gulf in the background.

This was a nice view from up top by the big gun. The Visitor's center is in one of those building but was closed for renovation. The water in the background is Pensacola Bay.

I walked to the bay to check it out. Again, lots of fisher-people. The lady in lower right was sunbathing while her husband was doing his job of trying to catch supper for her. 

The tow boat and barge was a reminder that the bay is part of the Intracoastal Waterway.

Tomorrow is moving day and I'll be headed almost due north about 120 miles into southern Alabama to a Corps of Engineers campground along the Alabama river. I'm not sure about cell signal since the area is pretty isolated and Google Earth shows it as having lots of trees. Hopefully, if I can't get a cell signal, I'll find an opening in the trees for Starlink. That is one of the main reasons I bought Starlink is for situations just like this. We'll see.  

Ya'll take care of each other. Maybe I'll Cya down the road.

Florida Beach

 Location: Fort Pickens National Seashore Campground, barrier island off Pensacola, Florida

Well as I said in my last post, I walked to the beach area to see what I could see. I decided to wear my sandals and debated with myself if I should wear socks. I have been advised pleaded with admonished by my daughter, granddaughter and others that I should never do that and that sticks in your head after a while. But, I was feeling rebellious and since I didn't know a living soul around this campground, I made an independent, executive decision as a man, and did NOT wear socks. My decision entirely.

I sent this picture to my family so my daughter and granddaughter knew I was complying with their demands. My X-wife (yeah, we're still friends) said my white feet below my tan lines looks like I'm wearing socks. I just shake my head sometimes. 

After a mild case of shame, I hung my head and started on my walk to the beach. The entire walk would be about 1.5 miles with half being in sand. I was pretty sure without socks that I would end up with some blisters on my feet and I intended to take pictures of them to send to the "no sock with sandals" people. But alas, no blisters occurred. Not sure why.

There is an elevated walkway that goes from the road to almost to the beach. It's in bad shape with loose boards which created tripping hazards. I was fully expecting to see the business cards of some "slip and fall" lawyers pinned to the loose boards. It wasn't quite as bad as I'm making it out to be, but whoever is in charge of maintenance needs to step up and do their job or look for a new one. No excuses.

I'm actually appreciative that they built the walkway. It would be a chore to trudge through the sand and brush to get to the beach. Oh wait, they didn't do this for people, it was so we wouldn't hurt the plants and stuff. Ok, I get it. 

This is some of the more mild disrepair. There were locations that could easily trip a child or adult. I'm still glad it was there, just wish it was maintained better. 

The end of the line for the boardwalk. Nothing but sand now.

The water looked nice and the sand looked clean but not the typical touristy beach. The tide was in and ebbing so it was somewhat peaceful. The sand is pure white and blinding in the sun. Yep, I forgot my sunglasses. I think I prefer the Texas beaches.

You top out over a sand dune and rewarded with this view. At first I thought that couple were arguing since the guy was raising his voice and they were face to face. After a minute, she turned away and I could see he was talking on the phone and she had been listening. It wasn't a good thing in public, but not as bad as I originally thought.

This is not the Florida beach that people are used to seeing. It is more of a place for surf fisher-people (look how PC I am) or people just sitting and watching the waves come in. 

This was two nice-looking, my age women. One was fishing while the other laid out on a towel. I talked to the fisher-woman for a few minutes. It was a nice but short visit.

That is an older couple that I've seen in the campground. They were sitting and enjoying each other's company. A complete contrast to the other couple. 

The campground has a lot of late teen/early twenties campers but I didn't see any of them on the beach. They were mostly tent campers and hung around the campground. I assume they are locals and have better beaches to go to when that is what they want. They were well behaved and respectful. Congratulations to their parents in raising them right. Since it's Sunday, most are packing up and getting ready to leave. 

Today will be an exploration day. I plan to explore old Fort Pickens which is only a couple miles away from this campground. I've visited many old Forts and battlegrounds in my travels. Some give off good vibes or neutral vibes. A couple have given off "bad ju-ju" vibes. The kind that makes you shake as tingles run up and down your spine. You get the sense that someone is there but they're not. The worst of these places was Fort Jackson on the Mississippi River below New Orleans. I felt lucky that I was able to walk away from there. My post about it is here >>> https://gozatravels.blogspot.com/2023/12/where-mississippi-river-ends.html

I am curious how my vibe-meter reacts to Fort Pickens today. I haven't done hardly any research yet, so I don't know its history. Fingers crossed that all goes well.

Ya'll take care of each other. Maybe, I'll Cya down the road.

Fort Pickens/Pensacola/National Seashore

 Fort Pickens National Seashore Campground; near Pensacola, Florida

We'll see if I can get pictures posted or not. My confidence level is about 75% (hint, hint, I've finished the post and it does include picture).

Today is day 3 of 5 here at Fort Pickens. It's been on my list of future campgrounds for a while now. It's a National Seashore Campground which means my Senior Pass gets me 50% off on campsites. I actually had reservations for this campground back in the fall of 2023 but canceled them because my air conditioner went out and I needed to get it replaced. At that time, I said, "everything happens for a reason and for some reason I wasn't meant to camp here at that time". Well, I'm here now.

 

Travel Picture. Interstate 10 somewhere between Biloxi and Pensacola.

This is from the road on the barrier island headed to the campground. Sand on both sides with a warning sign that I didn't fully read about some animal hatching and to stay on the road. 

The white sands of Florida beaches and the Gulf in the background.

Entering the Gulf Islands National Seashore, Fort Pickens area.

Campsite C-1. Electric/water for $20 per night with senior pass.

The campground is usually hard to get reservations, but it's still early in the season, so I got lucky. Also, it is an old campground with smaller campsite pads which limits it to smaller rigs, like Liberty. They have a strict requirement that all tires, RV and tow vehicle, must be on pavement. Freedom and Liberty just barely made it. I would have been too large with my old fifth wheel. The beach and Gulf of America are about 1/4 mile from my campsite. I haven't made that walk yet but plan to today. On day one, after getting camp set up, I drove around and got the lay of the land. There is an interesting old fort worthy of exploring which will probably be tomorrow's exploration. 

My verizon signal is on again/off again. I've run across this before and assume I'm real close to being in the exact middle between two cell towers. One second I have a very strong signal and the next only one-bar. It's frustrating. The good news is Starlink has a blazingly fast signal. It's as fast has changing channels on cable TV. That blazing speed was a problem at first. It seems this new laptop came with something called One Drive which backs up files to the Microsoft Cloud. That sounds like a good idea, if I had known it was doing it. I had already transferred all 15 years of my pictures from flash drives to this new laptop. Unknown to me, One Drive was uploading them to the cloud. Due to the blazing speed, by the time I noticed what was happening, I had already blew through about 35 GB of data. Luckily I caught it before it uploaded all of them which would have been about 180 GB's. Oh well, although it will cost me a little, it was a lesson learned. 

Yesterday, I drove about 45 minutes to Pensacola Naval Air Station to see their museum. The museum is extremely massive in size and information. I think it is impossible to absorb so much in only one day, but I will not be back on this trip. I've been to aviation museums before but this one tops them all. I would rank it 8 out of 10. The one drawback for me was there wasn't a natural flow to museum. A person could easily get lost or miss seeing something due to the strange layout. Oh well, it was nice having a positive experience at a museum for a change. 

The entrance to the National Naval Aviation Museum is deception. Such a small entry point for something so large inside. 

This picture doesn't represent anything special, it is just showing a small part of the museum, a very small part.

This exhibit sparked my interest the most. I had not heard of this plane or what it had done. It is a Navy NC-4 and it flew across the Atlantic Ocean 8 years before Charles Lindbergh. I understand Lindbergh did it solo and non-stop, but for some reason I was led to believe he was the first "to cross" the Atlantic. It's not the only item of my childhood education that sort of led me in a different direction. Our children are different now a days, if they want additional information that can easily google it and find all they want.  

I guess I need to publish this post "WITH PICTURES" so I can walk to the beach and check it out. The problem of the day is what shoes do I wear? Hmmmm, walking shoes to get to the beach and then change into sandals/swim shoes to walk through the loose sand and then along the beach before changing back to walking shoes. Going barefoot just ain't gonna cut it for me, maybe once on the beach, but not getting there. Decisions, decision.  I guess I'll carry a walmart bag for the shoes. Surely no one will laugh, at least not to where I can hear them. But hey, I don't know anyone around here so I can do anything I want, as long as it's legal.

Ya'll take care of each other. Maybe I'll Cya down the road.

National Seashore Campground

 Location: Davis Bayou National Seashore Campground; Ocean Springs, Mississippi. (just east of Biloxi)

Warning; There won't be any pictures in this post because I haven't figured out how to upload my pictures from my cell phone to this new fancy laptop. My old laptop gave up the ghost after at least 15 years of use. I had been nursing and cajoling it for a couple of years. Luckily. I saw the future a few months and bought a new laptop when they were on sale at Best Buy. I loaded a few programs on it, charged it up and set it aside until the day it would come to the rescue. That day was today. However, it seems computer stuff has changed a little bit over the last 15 years that I've been using my old laptop. The more I've gotten into this new laptop, the steeper the learning curve gets. Oh well, it will give me something to do instead of walking the while sands of the Florida beaches, or watching sunrises/sunsets or sipping coffee on the banks of Corps lakes. Yep, I sure am going to miss those boring activities while learning this new tech stuff.

This campground, Davis Bayou, is a small National Seashore campground. That means the senior pass is recognized and the camping rate is $11.00/night for water/electric. Good deal. The campground is perfectly maintained, and its condition is probably in my top 10. The problem is it fills up quickly due to its size and likeability. The camp host said he hasn't checked in a while, but soon, the entire summer and fall will be reserved. I made my reservation about 2 months ago and I felt lucky to have scored a spot. 

The campground is across Biloxi Bay from the town of Biloxi. I went there on my second day here to check out a museum and to drive through town. The museum, Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum ranked a 3 out of 10 but I think I need to check to make sure I haven't gotten unfairly jaded to all museums. The museum didn't surprise me too much since I've been disappointed in them for a while. The real surprise was the vibe I got from driving along the beach road through Biloxi. It wasn't a good or bad vibe. It was something on the bad side of center. One of those iffy things. To calibrate my vibe meter, I checked with 2 other people and mentioned how I felt and they both agreed. I guess that means I won't be back, but the campground is so great, if I can get reservations again I'll be back and will just avoid Biloxi.

I had pictures that I planned to post here but since I can't upload them, I'll just have to wait for me to educate myself. Once I graduate, with honors of course, from my Windows 11 Home Schooling Program, I might come back and post the pictures. 

Tomorrow is moving day and I'll be headed to another National Seashore Park. It's Fort Pickens National Seashore. I've been waiting years to get there which usual means I've over-hyped it in my mind and will be disappointed. We will see.

Once again, I'm sorry for no pictures. 

Ya'll take care of each other. Maybe I'll Cya down the road. 

Escaping New Orleans & The Tchefuncte River

 Fontainebleau State Park; Mandeville, Louisiana (north shore of Lake Pontchatrain)

A map to put the places into perspective.

The wind was blowing hard when I passed thru New Orleans on my way to this campground. Accuweather warned me that a wind advisory had been issued for 9 a.m. and would last all day. My tow distance was very short since I was just going to the other side of Lake Pontchatrain but the wind is what was bothering me. There were sustained winds in the upper 20 mph with gusts in the mid to upper 30 mph. I hadn't towed in such conditions with my new truck and that was a concerning unknown. Over the years I've easily towed in those windy conditions while towing a fifth wheel and even my current trailer, but my new truck hadn't been tested in that way yet. I know there are a lot of people who tow their RV's with weight distribution hitches and/or sway bars, but I've always believed that if the trailer is loaded correctly, sway bars are not needed and if the rear suspension is strong enough, weight distribution hitches are also not needed. My RPod seems to have been designed with this in mind since the only things of any weight behind the trailer axle is the furnace, water heater and spare tire. 

The windy conditions were going to be exacerbated (oops, that word slipped out from my previous life) by having to pass over the Twin Span bridges on Interstate 10. We were completely exposed to the wind. Ok, OK, I've built this up long enough. The new truck, "Freedom", did just fine. "Liberty" shook her booty a couple of times when some strong gusts hit us in our starboard quarter (wow, something must be wrong with me, those words go even farther back into an earlier life,,, it means the back, right corner), but Freedom put her right back in line. I'm now comfortable and confident in the new truck, although I still don't like all BS stuff on her and she better quit hollering at me if she knows whats good for her. That car she was hollering about wasn't even that close. I have a pair of wire cutters and not afraid to use them, if I can figure out which wire to cut. Oh, crap, nevermind.

At least the roads were in good shape. It helped ease my concerns about the wind.

This campground is on the north shore of Lake Pontchatrain. The entire area has a strange vibe to it. Although today is day four of my stay, I still haven't put my finger on that vibe. It feels like a strange combination of a touristy coastal town and "any small town" in the USA. It's not a bad Ju Ju feeling like I had gotten down at Fort Jackson a while back, but more like a heeby jeeby type of feeling.

Our campsite. Notice the Starlink attached to the grab-bar at the door. It worked fine even though I didn't fine tune the alignment.

This is looking out my back window. The squirrel eats it nuts while looking at the window. At first I thought it was looking at me, but I think it was seeing the reflections in the window. It was interesting to watch.

This road is inside the park and lined with live oaks with spanish moss.

It is a nice sculpture down by the shore. That is Lake Pontchatrain in the background and a nice fishing pier on the left. 

Strange looking bench before going out on the pier.

Another strange bench. This one is at the end of the fishing pier. The boy on the right is the grandson to the grandfather to the left, but not in the picture. They were making memories.

A view looking at the fishing pier. When I booked this campground, I had hopes of some nice sunsets but the weather hasn't cooperated. That's that strange bench on the left again, almost like a throne with it's own concrete pad.

Besides getting a prescription filled at Walmart, my plan was to visit two other places. Turned out that I couldn't get to one of those places because of emergency roadwork. I was able to get to the other one though. It was the Maritime Museum of Louisiana located in Madsionville which is the next town over from Mandeville. It is located along the Tchefuncte River (pronounced chah-funk-tuh). I figured I hadn't been disappointed in a museum in so long that I would give this one a try. Score = 6 out of 10. The best parts of the museum were the documentary videos stationed inside the museum. One video that liked in particular told about life along the Tchefuncte River. The river is only 70 miles long and empties into Lake Pontchatrain. The majority of lumber, bricks and pine pitch that was used to build New Orleans was made or harvested in this area and floated down the river then across the lake to New Orleans. After the Yankees captured New Orleans during the Civil War, the line of demarcation between the Union Troops and Southern Independence Fighters was the Tchefuncte River. There was a lot of interesting activity back then in terms of trade, blockade running, smuggling, etc, all of it seemingly centered on this river.Too much to get into in this post, and unless something strange happens in the future, I don't have any plans of returning to this area, so if I learn more about it, it will be online or library time.

The entrance to the museum. They do have a nice building. 

Some of their displays with half of a paddle wheeler replica to the right. 

This "jacobs ladder" gave me some rough flashbacks. I had to climb one of those when I was in the Navy. My ship and our sister ship was getting underway and I was sent to our sister ship to observe and critique their "sea and anchor" detail in their Combat Information Center as both ships got underway. To get me back to my ship, they put me on a Captains boat and took me to my ship. It hadn't even crossed my mind how I was going to get onboard until I saw the Jacobs Ladder hanging over the side. Stepping onto that ladder from a moving boat while the ship was making probably 5 knots was an experience. Climbing the ladder was something I only want to do once. My heart still races just thinking about it.

That's the Tchefuncte River from a nice city park in the town of Madisonville. 

Tomorrow is moving day with thunderstorms in the forecast. This has surely been some strange weather the last week to 10 days. I'll be headed east to a National Seashore Campground just the other side of Biloxi.

Ya'll take care of each other. Maybe I'll Cya down the road.