Friday, 17 and Saturday, 18 and Sunday, 19 January 2020
I've been finding myself increasingly desperate to have some catch-up time, time to do laundry and deal with being a week behind in my blog and just generally regroup.
It's remarkable how long it takes to figure out where to go next. A number of the attractions I wanted to visit turn out to be permanently closed or too expensive or not nearly as interesting (according to their online information) as I'd thought. And then there's the problem of finding places to stay. Given that MS is in the Deep South, I'd have thought snowbirds would be wanting to stay here so there'd be plenty of campgrounds.
Campgrounds
What I've found is that there are plenty of state campgrounds, and plenty of private places along the coast, but there are few private places in the rest of the state. The state campgrounds have been fine but their remote locations make me think they're unlikely to have wifi access, which I need. And most campgrounds of either type are quite small. This one I'm in is relatively large - with only 54 sites. It's hard for my dogs in a small campground because there's simply no place for them to walk - except maybe around and around in a circle (not likely to keep their interest), so that's limited my choices.
For these reasons, I've found myself staying here an extra night beyond the three I'd already planned. This place has laundry facilities (2 washers & 2 dryers) and really good showers. But they've only got 2 bathrooms for the entire campground and, though each one contains 2 toilet stalls and 2 shower stalls, one of those bathrooms is out of order. Leaving only 1 bathroom for everybody to use. The campground warns people in bold letters to lock the door for privacy - so exactly one person in the campground can use the facilities at a time. Every time I've thought about taking a shower I look over and see a line of folks waiting to pee. Screwy.
And unusually, they don't accept credit cards - cash or check only. But they'll take checks from anywhere in the US, so I didn't have to use up my dwindling stash of cash, which I can't replenish until Louisiana.
Still, their wifi signal is strong, their sites are mostly level, and it's big enough for us to walk maybe a quarter mile at a time - if we cover every part of the campground. No fenced-in dog park so they have to have leashes on always.
On top of which, the campground is right next to a field of horses that often spend hours standing near the fence staring into the campground. I have to be really careful to walk the dogs in such a way that they can't see the horses, which is tricky.
They have a huge number of bird feeders around the campground, and they keep them filled. Mostly I've seen sparrows and chickadees - Carolina Chickadees are the only ones that should be here, according to the bird book. These are definitely Southern chickadees - they use contractions. Lots of them don't bother to say all of chick-a-dee-dee-dee, which the bird book says this type says. Instead, these often say just dee-dee-dee-dee-dee: just because they're using contractions doesn't mean they're not chatterboxes.
Near the office they also have a very large number of wind chimes of various kinds. My site is right across from the office and, because of all the wind we've had lately, these chimes have actually kept me awake at night.
They have several of these made from bottles with a clapper made of the lid of a can. I thought it was a nice change from the usual wind chime types, and probably easy to make if you have something to cut off the bottom of a bottle.
License Plate
This is the current official state license plate. Mississippi comes out with a new design every 5 years and, unlike most states, they seem to replace the old ones quickly. In many states - Texas is one - you'll see designs being used that haven't been current for years, though the plates are still valid. This MS plate design came out only a year ago and already it's very nearly the only one I've seen - the previous version is almost all out of use.
MS has plenty of specialty plates, but most folks are using the regular state plate.
While we've been here
Yesterday I saw first a fire truck, then an ambulance leave the campground. I hadn't noticed them come, but they left right in front of us so we all saw them. I hope whichever camper had the medical problem is okay. It's odd that this is the 3rd time in about 3 weeks I've seen emergency workers come into a campground for a medical situation. The first was that strange place in Alabama that I left without using all I'd paid for - an ambulance followed me into that campground when I first got there; then there was that place on the MS coast where 4 police cars came for one of the campers; now here. I'm really sorry others are having problems and very glad it's not me. I suppose I should have expected to see them before now since so many campers are older folks, likely with more health problems than the average population sample.
We had a couple of days of rain - sometimes quite heavy - and I started finding leaks in the RV's cabin. I've forgotten how many months it's been since I discovered I no longer have a TV antenna, but I've been counting my blessings that it's never leaked. Well, I guess it finally reached its saturation point because it was definitely dripping with this very hard rain. And I can't tell you how sorry I am about that because now I'll have to do something about it. And the window in the ceiling in the bathroom has a very slow drip, though I haven't figured out where that's coming from. Bad enough that the dogs wait until they come inside to shake all the rain off - especially Gracie, who's a sponge. But to add to that, rain coming inside on its own? Not so great.
And starting last night, we're having plummeting temperatures - only past freezing last night but expected into the low 20s for the next couple of nights. I've been a little worried about road conditions because I'm planning to go farther north in the morning, but the owner here assured me that the roads would have dried up by then so there wouldn't be any ice on them tomorrow.
But all this weather is bringing uncertainty to my travel plans. I intended to spend all next week traveling in the Mississippi Delta region, but on the weather report yesterday, the National Weather Service started showing warnings of flooding along the Mississippi River. I'd wanted to drive along the Great River Road, which I've done in every river-bordering state since Wisconsin, but now I'm wondering if the river will be coming to meet me instead. Worse still is the fact that most campgrounds in that area are on the river. I can't make reservations until I call to see how likely they think it is that the campground will be flooded - and they've been closed all weekend.
I'm really glad I took the extra day here in the campground. Usually I tell myself I'll take the time to get things caught up and then kick myself because I didn't get everything done, and it turns out I just hadn't allowed myself enough time. This time, I did. And I've finally done everything I wanted to do. I did the laundry and swept the floors and caught up my blog posts and figured out where I want to go for the next several days and washed the dishes - just stuff. But stuff I've never allowed myself time to do all of. It's a novel feeling.
No comments:
Post a Comment