On the 29th of May we drove from Livingston to
Sulphur, Louisiana, just outside Lake Charles.
The Hidden Ponds where we ended up staying was a very basic RV Park. We found out that the park only had about 4
spots where the residents were permanent.
We also learned that most of the people residing there worked at either
the nearby factories or oil wells off the coast. Every weekday morning at around 6 am, trucks
(mostly noisy, older diesels) started their engines to go to work. And, since we were right at the entrance, we
had the pleasure of having them all drive by very closely to our rig.
But all was not bad during our stay there. It turned out that we were within a reasonable
driving distance to the Gulf of Mexico and the beaches in Louisiana are both
dog and vehicle friendly. We enjoyed
time with Bear wearing him out chasing the ball.
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| Pick your spot on the beach! |
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| Two happy guys! |
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| Met a man who was "crabbing" |
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| Happy Dog! |
Our stop in this particular spot was chosen because it was
near a Freightliner repair shop. I
mentioned in a previous blog that we discovered that our odometer wasn’t working
and was permanently stuck at 42,162 miles.
In the end, Freightliner had to replace the computer board that operates
the odometer and other readouts on the dash.
We also found out that our rig had about 18,000 more miles that what was
quoted to us at the time of purchase.
Ouch!
Our next goal was to make it to the Natchez Trace starting
in Nachez, Mississippi. We stayed one
more night near Lake Charles then headed to Livingston, LA to stay 2 nights at
Lakeside RV Park. As a pleasant
surprise, this is one of the nicer parks that we’ve stayed in.
From there we made it all the way to Natchez,
Mississippi. Here we had our first stab
at a state park. We chose Nachez State
Park which had water and 50 amp electric. However we had to conserve water
somewhat since we needed to use the dump station at the end of our stay.
Nachez is an incredibly colorful area with a rich
history. It is the oldest continuous
settlement on the Mississippi River. Prior
to the Louisiana Purchase, Natchez was the southernmost settlement in the
Americas. Spanish, French, English, and
Scottish used the town as a global trade center. Around 1850, the town had ½ the population of
all the millionaires in the United States and they built many beautiful,
stately mansions. The town will
celebrate its 300th anniversary next year.
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| Monmouth Historic Inn, circa 1818 |
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| Rosalie, Circa 1823 |
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| Magnolia Hall, Circa 1858 |
Originally used
as a trade route for American Natives, as well as a migration route for bison,
the Natchez Trace was established as a path between the southern part of the
Mississippi to as far as Ohio valley.
After the American Revolutionary War ended, Americans constructed
flat-boats from logs and carried burdens of trade items via the Mississippi to
sell at ports such as Natchez. Once the
items sold (including the logs used to carry them), the peddlers would then use
the trace as a means back to their originating points and start the process
over again. Many of these rugged people
traveled their return journey by foot.
During our short stay, we lost our mail. I requested our mail to be sent to a UPS
Store in Nachez that I found online. It
turned out it was actually a drop spot in an office supply store. We still had not received it by the time we
had to leave and asked them to have it returned to our P.O. box in Livingston,
TX. To date, they still haven’t received
the missing mail back. Fortunately, this
particular mail delivery didn’t have our permanent Texas driver’s license in
it!
We continued on our journey up the Natchez trace and stopped
at as many of the roadside historical markers that allowed big rigs. On the June 12th we were at Spring
Ridge RV Park in Clinton MS for 3 nights. On the 15th we were at
Campground at Barnes Crossing in Tupelo for 4 nights. On the 19th we check into our
current location at KOA North of Nashville.
So here we are at our “bucket list” destination. So far we’ve spent a week adjusting to our
surroundings and taking care of things like a very costly rock chip on the Jeep
requiring a total replacement of the windshield, doctor’s appointments,
etc. (We do have ordinary lives at times.)
For fun, Wednesday we took a short trip downtown to music
row to get our bearings. Hopefully, next
week we can take in some of the music!
Tomorrow will be our 17th wedding anniversary. If anyone had asked us only a few short years
ago if we would be retired and living on the road, we would have not have
believed it. We are still appreciative
of every day we have to travel this beautiful, free country of ours.
So for now, we hope all our friends are well!
Katherine, Mike and Bear
