Day 2 in Mississippi

We pushed off bright and early this morning...just shy of noon...for another day on the Natchez Trace Parkway. Now we're headed right through the THICK of Mississippi. First stop was a walk through a cypress swamp. What an ethereal atmosphere...hushed and intensely green. The surface of the water was covered with tiny round green leaves which made it look like a solid green carpet.

Check out these cypress knees! And that really is water, not a solid surface.

Did you know where we got the name for alligator? I didn't!

This is a close up of the leaves on the water's surface....doesn't even look like the same thing you see from above.

Lots of driving today and not as many stops as yesterday. But the real fun began when we started looking for Tombigbee State Park, outside of Tupelo. Road closures caused us to have to take a roundabout route...and the route was already pretty convoluted as it was. We are WAAAAY out there somewhere in Mississippi tonight. Hope we can find our way back to the Parkway tomorrow, for our last leg to Nashville!

The State Park is scenic, but we couldn't stop laughing when we saw some of the camping rigs. At last night's campground we looked like the poor country cousins in our little pop-up

tent trailer among a hundred or so half-million dollar motor homes and their accompanying million dollar boats. The tables have turned tonight! This must be the campground where the locals come to hang out between homes and jobs. Our camper looks like the Taj Mahal here. You know, everything is relative in life, isn't it?

However, even our Taj Mahal has its challenges. Our brand new air conditioner that we just had installed last month suddenly stopped. In Mississippi. In the summer. In the afternoon. And all that beautiful water you see? No Swimming...fishing only! Yep, we're having an adventure now!

Ah, but the gift of music came to the rescue. After supper, as I was sitting outside the tent, simmering in my own private Mississippi steam bath, a man from a campsite down the way came over with a guitar. We spent an hour or so playing songs together, swapping out leading and accompanying each other. it was great have something to take my mind off the heat. 

And by the time we quit, after dark, the temperature was more tolerable and I topped it off with a long shower. Ahhhhhhh, what wonderful simple pleasures on the road! I'm looking forward to logging some hours in that air conditioned truck tomorrow...and heading toward the mountains!

Hope all you wonderful dads had a great Fathers Day today. Blessings to you all!