Once Again, We Head South

My have times changed! We are watching the American Music Awards and just watched Jennifer Lopez' performance. Maybe 'cause we were just at Graceland a couple of weeks ago and saw, once again, the tapes of the Ed Sullivan show where they were SO CAREFUL to ONLY show Elvis from the waist up. Anyway, the dance -- and the costume -- Jennifer did -- and almost wore -- was just plain lewd! To say nothing of some of the rest of the performers!

When I made a comment to that effect, Forry reminded me that it had been over fifty years ago when Elvis caused all that furor... Boy, nothing can take the wind out of your sails faster than a remark like that!

We got ourselves organized this morning, packed up and left the Mid-South RV Resort after our eight night stay, once again heading south towards the Gulf Coast. It was a very grey, overcast day. The clouds were hanging so low, it was almost foggy.  The automatic lights along the Interstate 55 S were still on. The buzzards weren't even flying -- we saw at least a half dozen of them just sitting, looking miserable, in a field.

I found an RV park about halfway down the state of Mississippi near Canton called Movietown RV Resort. I called to make sure they were open (although that no longer seems to be an issue this far south). The lady assured me they were open and had plenty of room. Since there were only directions listed in the Woodall's book, I asked her for an address for the GPS. She gave me the address of the church 'right across the street,' but never mentioned that the office was not open today.

When we arrived at the RV Park, we, indeed, found that there was no one at the office.  There was a box on the side wall with maps and envelopes and instructions to put our money in the envelope and put it through the slot in the bottom of the office door.  The map showed a couple of X'd out sites that "had electrical issues," but stated that all of the sites had 30 & 50 amp electricity, water and sewer. We drove into the park, found a nice drive-through site and got ourselves parked and settled. It was so wonderfully warm that we actually had all the windows open and the fans on until it got dark.

Two States -- To Get Groceries?!

This morning we watched Juni and Tom go down the road --

and leave the RV Park here in Tunica are their way to Red Bay, Alabama and the Allegro Bay factory where they are going to have some warranty work done.

We were out of orange juice, so went into the Piggly-Wiggly in Tunica. I wanted to re-stock some staples for the kitchen as well as pick up a few things for next week. The prices were extremely high; the vegetables all looked wilted; and the meat department area smelled bad. I decided that I'd much drive the extra twenty miles to the Krogers that the GPS had shown.

I always forget that the GPS shows mileage as the crow flies... It was more like 30-35 miles! It was a nice drive through what they call the North Delta country. We saw this line-up of what looked like round bales.  But, when we got closer, we realized

that they were actually tightly packed bales of cotton. Quite a bit different looking then the boxcar-sized rectangles of cotton we saw in fields in Arizona last winter.

Not much later we found ourselves crossing this narrow two-lane bridge over the mighty Mississippi River into the State of Arkansas. The store in Helena, Arkansas that the GPS said was a Kroger, no longer was. It still wasn't great, but it was a lot better than the one in Tunica.

We got back to Mid-South RV Park just as the sun was setting --

These first two pictures were taken facing east --

While this one was towards the west --

Sunsets in Mississippi are gorgeous!

Sunshine, a Walk and Paula Dean's Buffet

For the first time in several days, we woke up to bright sunshine. Nice!
 
This afternoon Forry and I took our walk around our portion of Mid-South RV Park (it's divided into two sections).  There are a few evergreen trees, a few bare trees and a couple that are still pretty red --

The RVs are clustered on one side of the park which leaves a great deal of open area. It's certainly not more than one-third full.

That's Tom and Juni's motorhome with their blue Toad. Auntie Violet is parked right behind them --

This is the ditch area behind the motorhomes. It's still pretty full of water from the storm night before last --

This evening we all went over to Paula Dean's Buffet at Harrah's. We have gotten extremely mixed reviews about Paula Dean's restaurants, but thought we should at least try one out. It was actually one of the nicer buffets we've been at. I really enjoyed the southern fried shrimp while Tom was raving about the grilled oysters. I was a bit disappointed in the dessert table -- I think I may have been expecting multi-layered cakes instead of rather anemic looking cupcakes.

A Drizzly Day

We woke up to overcast skies this morning and we've had off and on drizzly showers all day. A couple of times I thought it was going to settle in and rain, but it never did. At least that awful gusty wind has stopped.

It was a warm rain. I was in and out a couple of times to take out garbage and get things out of the car and I never did put my shoes on...

Juni decided it was a good day to wash their RV.  She started out just cleaning the bugs off the front and the windshield, but before we knew it, she was washing the whole rig. Tom tried to assist, but she definitely wanted to do it her way! She even gave their Toad a bath. Then went inside and gave the two dogs a bath and trim. We were giving her a bad time about her hyperactivity, but Tom says she just doesn't know how to sit still!.

I spent part of the day sorting the mail Daughter MM had sent, filing papers, shredding stuff, and paying a couple of bills. With that all out of the way, I didn't feel guilty about sitting down to read the magazines and Mennonite Weekly Reviews that were in the box. I also gave the Mid-South RV Park office a call and extended our stay here a couple of more days. It's hard to beat $15 a night.
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Tunica, Mississippi

We got ourselves semi-organized this morning and left Tom Sawyer's Mississippi River RV Park and went to find the State of Mississippi. It was only a short drive to join our friends Tom and Juni at Mid South RV Resort in Tunica, Mississippi.  They've been here for a couple of days while we were enjoying our time at the River watching the tugs and barges.

Juni and Tom had arranged for a site right beside them, but when we got to the office about noon to register, we discovered that the people in that site had asked for a late check-out and were still there! The staffer gave us a site down the way a bit and said if we wanted to wait, we could move when the people left. So we just parked Auntie Violet and went to visit with Tom and Juni for a couple of hours. We needed to get our puppy fix anyway and Tika and Izzie were glad to oblige!

By 1:30 our site was free, so we drove over and got ourselves set up. It was a gusty, windy day and by the time we had everything done, we were chilled. It felt good to curl up with my afghan on the couch and read. Well, actually to take a nap...

While they were here, Tom and Juni had discovered a wonderful seafood buffet at the Hollywood Casino. It was so good, they were more than willing to go again tonight (it's only on Friday and Saturday nights). We ate King crab and Snow crab, along with lots of shrimp, stuffed crab, scallops, crawfish, frog legs (not me!), oysters, crab cakes, catfish, etc, etc.  It was so good! There was barely room for a scrumptious chocolate cupcake with chocolate mousse topping.