Six Days and 1,508 Miles Later....

We left Ohio last Friday...  headed to Texas, where we'll get our annual medical check-ups and get ready to winter in Mexico.

We've made this drive many times in the past and decided to drive through West Virginia and Virginia this time to get to the Natchez Trace.  The northern Terminus of the Trace is just south of Nashville...  I think that is milemarker 440.  We got on a few miles south of the terminus, and almost immediately had a fairly long detour off the Trace... around through the countryside...  and finally back on the Trace close to the Meriwether Lewis Campground, where we spent the night.

That campground has 31 camping sites.  We expected it to be filled as Labor Day was still a week away.  Not so....  there were only 3 other campers there for the night.  A couple of folks came in on motorcycles and had a picnic at one of the sites, but for the most part, the campground was empty.  Even the space for the Campground Host was vacant.  Needless to say, we had a nice, quiet night and headed on south the next morning.

A couple hundred miles from the Meriwether Lewis Campground is the Jeff Busby Campground...  just south of Tupelo, Mississippi.  Not as many campsites there, but since it was Monday we didn't expect it to be full.   There was nobody set up in any of the sites when we got there, only a lone bicyclist who had left his bike and was walking one of the trails.  By evening 3 other campsites were taken.  Our only visitors were that family of raccoons in the upper right photo.  We did have a nice visit with the folks a few sites down from us, and the bicyclist joined us for breakfast the next morning before we all headed off our separate ways.

We got off the Natchez Trace just south of Jackson, MS where we could catch I 20 over to Shreveport.  We have taken the Trace to the southern terminus at Natchez, MS, but that would drop us off at I 10, a lot further south than we wanted to go.

The Natchez Trace is a two-lane, non-commercial vehicle road.  There are no billboards, no gas stations or convenience stores...  only rolling hills, farmland and woods.  As always, we saw several turkeys and deer.  The speed limit is 50 MPH... all the 440 miles.  It's not for anyone who's in a hurry.  There are 2 free campgrounds as well as many historical sites, information centers and other facilities pertinent to the Trace and its history.  It's actually a National Park...  a very long, very narrow National Park...  on either side of the road, but not usually visible because of fields or woods, there are houses, farms and the such.  There are many access roads and you can get off and drive to a nearby town for gas or food.  I've lost track of how many times we've traveled the Trace...  but it's obviously one of our favorite routes.

We arrived at our daughter's place outside of Glen Rose, TX before noon on Wednesday....  1,508 miles and 6 days later from leaving Ohio.  Our daughter and son-in-law have an RV site near their home where we are welcome to stay.  After getting set up, Bill had to go check out Victor's latest project.  He's hoping to spend some time on some of that equipment.  Actually, the lower tier of photos above are where Victor will be building his new office/equipment buildings.  He is a gas/oil consultant/contractor and his business is booming.  Right now they've had a lot of rain and all that dirt in front of the loader is too wet to move.  

I've made our doctor appointments and made plans to get other things done.  Today we'll get the vehicles inspected (Texas requires an annual inspection), we have our new vehicle registration stickers...  that kind of stuff....  takes time and some planning.

So we'll be here a month or so getting ready to head to Mexico.  Oh yes... we're looking at airline tickets now that we have more definite plans.  As you can tell, we'll be kinda busy for a while.

Maybe I'll even get caught up on my blog and reading other folks blogs...  I've missed that.

That's All For Today!