Author Archives: Jill and Bud

We had a winter weather watch here for yesterday and today. This is what we got. I admit I was excited to see snow and was tempted to go out in it. But before I could bundle up to face the 34 degree temperatures, the snow of this “intensity” had stopped!

Sunday afternoon Sean, Jamie, Bria and I went hiking at the Waterworks Trails.

These are biking/hiking trails around the pretty little reservoirs…

still in use…

after 144 years.

It was a nice afternoon, sixty degrees and sunny.

But Monday morning, when we packed up to move here, to Tyler State Park in Texas, it was twenty-four degrees.

Matey and I have been taking our morning walks around the lake here in below freezing temperatures.

We enjoy the walks, though neither of us wants to stay out long.

It is a pretty park…

and it has been sunny,

so our afternoon walks have been pleasant.

We have water and groceries in because tomorrow we may get rain, ice, sleet and snow. At least we don’t have to move again until Monday, when all that should be melted and gone. Hello winter, indeed! As long as we don’t lose power we’ll be fine. Here’s hoping the heavy stuff misses us as predicted so far.

Sean, Jamie and Bria came over for a hike today. I had taken Matey on two short walks, so this time he stayed home with Bud. It felt strange to walk without him. We drove up to the top of Hot Springs Mountain and walked the trails around the top of that and North Mountain. Here I am following Jamie and Bria along Goat Rock Trail as it leads to North Mountain.

We stopped at a rock wall for this selfie, that Sean took. With his long arms he’s our official selfie photographer.

A bit further on we came to an opening where you could look down across the hills. You can just see one of the campers far below in our campground.

All together we walked almost four miles and ended up back near the Hot Springs Mountain Tower. We came back to the trailer and had a supper of black-eyed peas with collard greens, cabbage and ham and corn bread that Bud had made. It was delicious. A good start to the New Year.

We’re staying at Gulpha Gorge, the campground for Hot Springs National Park. We’re the blue dot in the upper left of the map, and if you look closely you can see the dotted lines that are the hundred year old trails going over and around Hot Springs Mountain and down to Central Avenue and Bathhouse Row. Those trails are why I love this campground.

The campground itself is pretty small and is squeezed between Gorge Road and Gulpha Creek.

Unfortunately, it’s been a very rainy stay and these stepping stones, which have been an inch to four inches under water the whole time, are the only way across to the trails.

But this is still the right campground for the holidays, because Jamie and Sean live at the red pin. That’s only seven miles across town from us at the blue dot and an easy drive at night; city driving and no worries about animals on the road.

This time I chose a site right along the creek. Looks nice, but these sites are close together.

I thought it would be quieter, but the road is still close and we still hear the traffic.

Worse, the winter sun drops behind the mountain putting us in the shade even at 3 in the afternoon. So I will definitely come here for the holidays again, but will choose a site away from the creek with a bit more space and sun.

The stockings were hung, and Santa found the trailer

Christmas breakfast at Jamie’s.

Bud and Bria waiting for the family.

The annual Christmas picture…Tia, Jacey, Jamie, Sean, Bria and Adler.

The presents.

More presents.

The food; Sean and his brother-in-law Jamie (yes, it’s confusing) at the buffet.

More food.

Lots of food.

A wonderful day…

and to all a good night.

I’ve been wanting to do a post on some of the wonderful trees I’ve encountered in our travels. Today’s walk back to some old growth cypresses has inspired me to try.

The star of the walk was the “castle tree”, that giant furthest out in the water. Bud has a cold and didn’t want to walk in the 33 degree weather, so I pressed Matey into service to give some sense of the size of these monsters.

Since my favorite wildlife is trees, I am almost always among them…

even if they are only a few inches tall, like this specimen at the Burnt Cape Ecological Preserve in Newfoundland.

One of the most sacred places I have ever been is amidst the giant redwoods in California.

We visited them not long after seeing these amazing bristlecone pines. They are growing above 10,000 feet in altitude and are thousands of years old.

Trees don’t move on a time scale that we can see, yet they manage to adapt to the place where they are growing, even when the ground beneath them changes.

Some trees are majestic…

and some are whimsical…

and all of them add so much beauty.

They hold the soil in place…

and give us oxygen.

Though I have met many wonderful trees…

this poor thing growing beside the road into Lake Catherine State Park remains one of my favorites because to me it represents hope. No matter what we humans manage to do the trees will go on.

We’ve moved north about a hundred miles to Chemin-a-Haut State Park in northern Louisiana. Chemin-a-Haut means high road and is on another ancient trail like Natchez Trace.

Matey likes this place because there are armadillos here.

We did a bit of exploring today.

They have some really nice cabins here.

I love the cypress circled by their “knees”.

It is such a privilege to spend my days amid so much beauty. What a wonderful way to celebrate 75 years. (And Bud made me a birthday pumpkin pie.) Lucky, lucky me.

The truck is fixed but our plans to move were cancelled, so we had a few days to just relax and hang out. We played disc golf in Natchez.

We played disc golf at the park. Bud’s throw went a bit astray here, but thankfully not into the lake.

The town course had beautiful old trees in a park setting around a ball golf course.

The park course was around the dam. This is the unusual spillway.

And this is their unusual little park office.

Staying 10 more days without sewer involved a bit of water management. Here’s a day’s worth of dishes washed and rinsed with a bit over a gallon of water.

Here we are taking a portable tank full of of shower water…

up to the trailer dump station.

We only had to do that once. Otherwise we just tried to enjoy the beauty…

and like these turtles, take advantage of the sunshine when it came.

The other day we went to Natchez to visit the museum and grounds of the Grand Village of the Natchez, a sacred center in use by the Natchez people at the time of contact with the French.

It was interesting and beautiful. My favorite was this immense water oak tree. I love the huge old trees in this part of Mississippi.

On the way back we decided to try driving the Natchez Trace Parkway rather than our usual route up U.S.61.

What a beautiful road! We have since learned a bit about it. The Parkway is part of the National Park system and runs for 444 miles from Natchez, MS to Nashville, TN. It follows near the old Natchez Trace; this natural corridor was used by natives for centuries. In the late 1700’s and early 1800’s it was used extensively by people from the Kentucky/Tennessee region. They would float their goods down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers on flatboats. When they got to Natchez they would sell the goods, disassemble the flatboats and sell them for lumber and walk the 450 miles back to Nashville and then to their homes. The Natchez Trace was the route they took.

The Parkway was just completed in 2005 and has some beautiful bridges. It is closed to commercial traffic and though the speed limit is just 50 mph the part we have driven has no stops and no traffic making it a great alternative.

On the way back to camp we stopped at the site of the Elizabeth Women’s Academy. This is all that’s left of the first female institute of higher learning for women in Mississippi, built in 1818. Mileage on the Parkway is counted from the southern end, this was at mile 5.1. Natchez State Park, where we’re staying, is near mile 10.

Today we drove as far as mile 45.7 where we stopped to see the Grindstone Ford and Mangum Mound. The path to the ford led past these old tombstones from the middle 1800’s.

This is the original trail leading down to the ford. In the flats near the ford the trail became indiscernible, probably from flooding. It was interesting to note that in the early 1800’s this was the northern edge of European settlement.

On the other side of the road was Mangum Mound, This was a burial place used between 1350 and 1500.

It was a pretty large earthwork. You can just about see Bud on top in front of the largest trees. There were remnants of silk flowers on top, reminding us that this site is still sacred to the descendants of those buried here.

On the way back we stopped at mile 41.5 where there is a section of the original Trace that over the years has been worn below the surrounding forest.

This “Sunken Trace” was at least 20 feet below the surface. It was a bit eerie to walk this path that thousands of footsteps had worn into the the forest floor.

Our last stop of the day was at Mount Locust at mile 15.5. There is an interpretive center there that at 3:40 PM was already closed. A ranger told us we could walk around, but the whole site was closing at 4:00. This place was built in 1785 and was used as a “Stand”, an inn for travelers walking the Trace. For $.25 you got a meal and a safe place to sleep on the porches or grounds,

This is the back porch. I would have loved to have more time here, even though you can’t go inside. The building has been declared structurally unsound. I hope it can be stabilized.

If we would have had more time I would have peered into the windows.

This sidewalk went all around the building, it looks quite old, but I doubt it is original.

This is the original Natchez Trace which runs right in front of Mount Locust.

All of the sites have this beautiful fencing and along with the Parkway itself, are very well maintained. We’ve seen only a tenth of the Parkway; in future travel I will try to take us along more of this fascinating roadway.

On Friday we came to Natchez State Park, near Natchez, Mississippi for what was to have been a five night stay. And we were supposed to have been in one of six full hookup sites. But those were not Starlink friendly so we came here, water and electric only, but a strip of sky to the north. And, even over the weekend, very few campers.

We’re east of the Mississippi River again, but yesterday we went back across to Louisiana for $2.89/gallon diesel. As we started out I heard a clunking under the truck that sounded louder than it should. Bud waited while I ran into Walmart for a couple of things. While I was gone he went under the truck but saw nothing amiss. When I came back he had me listen near the rear end while he shifted into reverse and drive. Uh-oh. I don’t think it should make a clang. I had him listen while I did it. Nope, not right.

So he got an appointment today, the 10th, at the Dodge dealership. And we decided we’d better not plan to leave tomorrow, the 11th. Our plans had already been changed because about a month ago Paul B. Johnson State Park called to say they were doing renovations and had to cancel our stay. I found an alternative at Goshen Springs. Now we had to cancel that!

We decided to just stay where we were until the 19th. It’s a nice enough park.

There are a couple of trails…

and a quirky little disc golf course. But since we’re in a site without sewer and we weren’t sure how many days we’d be without the truck, we hitched up yesterday and towed up to the dump station and emptied all our wastewater tanks. Now we can make it the rest of the stay just using our portable tank to empty the shower tank.

Bud just called from the dealer. The problem was loose bolts on the u-joints, they had almost come apart, but thankfully hadn’t. That was from the transmission leak repair that Riser Dodge in Hot Springs did a year ago. The one that took them three weeks to do less than six hours of work. Oh, and the transmission is leaking. Riser has to be just about the worst dealer out there! Anyway, they thought they would have the truck fixed in about an hour, since we caught it before any damage was done. But our next site is already cancelled so we’re staying put. So I put the Christmas stuff out.

All six things.

And the outdoor decorations, too. Cheers!