May 4 and 5 - Wandering from Corps of Engineers to Corps of Engineers

It's hot! and it is only early May.

Of course Mississippi and Tennessee are not Maine but still it is hot. The locals say they wonder what July and August will be like this year. We left the Tombigbee Corp of Engineers park and headed roughly north east.

Several more stops along the Natzhez Trace including walking way back in the woods to find that an early pit mine isn't anymore. At least no snakes along the way. We've followed quite a few miles on this road and would highly recommend it for a very leisurly drive. You don't take this road to make time but to enjoy a bit of history and a quiet pace.

We've been travelling, touring, walking and taking in a lot of history sites for the last three weeks and decided to take a down day. Leaving the Trace just north of the monument to Meriweather Lewis, we kept to small roads sout of Memphis. Shocking to get onto I-65 briefly and once again be amongst the 18 wheelers. Luck was with us again or is all that good, clean living? :) and we got a waterfront camp site at the Corps of Engineers Ragland Bottom CG on the Caney Fork River. There was a cancellation and we decided to stay two nights just to rest up and get the camper/truck cleaned up a bit. The dam is being worked on so the river was quite low but not enough to stop a fascinating parade of fishing boats, party boats and canoes/kayaks. Nice neighbors shared fresh caught fish and sweet potato with us. We gave back some smoked salmon.

Relaxing day today. Caught up on laundry, cleaning the inside of the camper and just resting by the river. Neighbors brought over some smoked pork BBQ saying they knew northerners never got it that good. I'm afraid they were right! Again we have a 5th wheel group who travels with a smoker on wheels like you would see at a fair. Big, ugly and cooks fabulous meat.

We are so fortunate to have a truck camper. Easy to manuver, large enough for our needs, small enough to get into places the 5ths and TTs and As will never go. Yes I know our camper is one of the bigger ones but we can still fit down a lot of our country's small spaces.

Tomorrow we will head east, braving the traffic through Knoxville and ending up somewhere in far western VA or northern TN. There are National Forest campsites, more COEs and who knows where we will end up. We're pretty well headed home but surely will find more to see and do along the way.