The Great (North) American Road Trip: Remember when it was a triumph to spell the word Mississippi.

Mississippi

Things I knew about Mississippi before we visited.

The Mississippi River runs along the western border.

With this little amount of knowledge that we had, Jen and I expected to roll through Mississippi fairly quickly. This all changed when we arrived at the visitor’s center in Tunica, MS. We needed to use the restroom, so we made a pit stop and figured we check out the center and grab some info on camping and what not. A nice lady greeted us as we entered the doors. She was nice enough to give us some good info on a place to camp and hooked us up with some good general information on Mississippi. She told us of the city of Vicksburg, which had a nice Civil War National Park that consisted mainly of the battlefield, and of many other places that we should try to visit on our way through the state. We stood around and talked to her for a bit, and she even offered us some soda and juice for the road. She was a very nice lady and I got the impression that not many people bothered to stop in, as she was hanging out with a friend. I was very glad that she let us in on all the good stuff because otherwise we would have missed out on one of the surprise hits of the trip.

Arkabutla Lake, MS

The lady at the visitor’s center told us that Arkabutla Lake had some campgrounds and that the lake was pretty nice and there was a bunch of stuff to do around the lake. This sounded like a good idea and relaxing a little bit sounded nice, and swimming didn’t sound too bad either. The lake was about thirty minutes from the highway and we even saw a turtle taking its sweet time crossing the street on the way up there. Luckily, it was close enough to the other side that it wasn’t in jeopardy of getting smashed into turtle soup. When we arrived at the lake, we drove around and checked out the campgrounds. We settled on the primitive sites, since they were cheaper and there was no one else there.

We set up our tent and decided that a dip in the lake sounded really nice, especially since it was hot and muggy out. The lake looked damn nice and we couldn’t wait to cool off a little bit. We walked the short trek through the beach and set our stuff down. We walked down to the shoreline and instead of being greeted by a nice cool lake, we were treated to water that was the temperature of a warm bath. It was sort of ridiculous how warm the water was. At first we almost didn’t want to fully submerge ourselves, but after a minute or two we decided that it was better than standing around being hot, and at least the breeze on our wet bodies cooled us down. All in all, the lake felt good despite being rather warm. We swam around for a good twenty minutes or so and proceeded to the foot shower to wash off the sand. On route to the car, we made a pit stop in the restroom and noticed that there were some pretty sweet showers inside. This pleased us immensely.

Dinner was next on our list of things to do, so we looked through our food supplies and came up with a nice supper that consisted of some beef and vegetable soup along with a bag of white rice. After eating we decided to get in the tent for some shut eye. It was at this moment that we realized why there were no other campers at the tent campground. It turns out that Mississippi stays relatively hot and muggy throughout the night. This was our introduction to camping in the south and was the start of sleeping in the heat.

The next day we were awakened with a nice blanket of sweat on our bodies and never did a shower sound so good. As we packed up the camp so we could head over to the showers by the lake, a moth decided to land on Jen’s hand. The moth must have really liked the salty taste that was on her finger, because it stayed there licking her hand for a good five minutes or so. When Jen shook the moth off, it didn’t want to leave and even after it was shaken off, the moth flew right back like Jen’s finger was covered in crack. We finally were able to shake the moth and we hit the showers. After the shower, we headed down and as we drove out of the park we noticed that we had a hitchhiker in the form of a grasshopper. He was stuck on our windshield wiper and hung on for dear life all the way into town. The grasshopper was hanging on the wiper for about thirty minutes or so, and took off as we went into Wal-Mart to get some ice.

Vicksburg, MS

Vicksburg was a welcomed surprise which had not only a great battlefield, but was also the place where Coca Cola was first bottled. The soda had been developed in Georgia and was only available in fountain form until Joseph Biedenharn got the great idea to bottle it and sell it on his own, with the permission of the Coca Cola Company that is. The old factory is now a museum that had some good information as well as some nice memorabilia. Following the factory we drove up to the Vicksburg Battlefield. Since it is a national park, I flashed the national park pass and we were able to do the driving tour for free. The driving tour was sort of cool, but it was mostly just monuments dedicated to the different battalions that fought. The big payoff came when we arrived at the Cairo Museum that was inside the park.

The Cairo is a union ship that was sunk in 1862 during a battle. The ship was sunk and was left at the bottom of the river for about a hundred years. In 1956 a couple of historians and explorers set out to find the wreckage. It wasn’t until 1960 that they had made the discovery and found the wreckage. In 1964 they devised a plan to tow what was there to Vicksburg. The ship is now put back together using most of the original pieces, because the cold depths of the water preserved the boat really well. It is really cool to walk inside of the ship, and to look at cannons and stand on the same wood that soldiers stood on. It was really surreal and exceptionally well kept together. Along side the boat is a museum that holds a bunch of artifacts that were found in and around the wreckage. There was everything from bottles and jugs of medicine to shoe shining kits. There were all sorts of tools and other mechanical parts that were used on board the ship. Dishes from the crew as well as the officers were on display to show the differences between them. It was all very interesting and amazing to look at all the old artifacts and to read about how some of the stuff was used back then. It was an amazing stop.

We then drove to another state park to camp out for the night. We found out that the park had showers, so we figured that we would be okay sleeping out in hot and muggy Mississippi. We came to a place and the registration office was closed so we followed their instructions and drove the campsite and set up our stuff, with the plan to pay in the morning. At the registration office there were signs for bears amongst other things, which was rather surprising to us. We found a campground and set up the tent. The mosquitoes were out in full attack mode so we set up quickly. The campsite was pretty creepy. The sky was a little sketchy looking and we were a little scared that it might rain, but we left the top off anyway as it was just too stuffy in there with it on. All through the night there were tons of noisy bugs buzzing all around. We even heard some weird animal noise that I can only place as some sort of bird species. It crept pretty damn close to the tent as well. Seeing those bear signs put our minds in a weird place and between that and the heat, it took us a long while to fall asleep. Needless to say we made it through the night and packed up and headed for the showers. The showers were once again greatly appreciated and set us up nicely for our adventure into Louisiana. We were sad to leave Mississippi, as it was a truly beautiful state. Most everyone that we met were very pleasant and welcoming. Having known so little of the state before we entered, it was a great surprise to find that we had such a good time while we were there. We would love to see it in the late fall or early spring when it would actually be nice to camp and hang out.