​Our original plan on Monday morning had been to drive to Jackson, see the capitol, and then head south to the Homochitto National Forest and find a place to camp.  However, we didn’t get out of Jackson until almost 3PM, so we started looking for places closer to Jackson.  We’re really glad we did, because we quickly realized that the Natchez Trace Parkway, which is a National Park road like Skyline Drive or the Blue Ridge Parkway, runs right through Jackson.  And, about 30 miles south of Jackson, there’s a National Park Campground called Rocky Springs Campground.  And…it’s free.  It only has 22 campsites, and it doesn’t have any hookups or even potable water, but all of the sites are paved, relatively level, and nicely spaced out.  You can’t make reservations, so you just have to show up and hope you can find a space, but we decided to try since it is less than an hour from Jackson.  We took a minor detour off the Natchez Trace Parkway to stop at a Kroger and stock up on groceries, and headed for Rocky Springs.


On a rainy Monday evening in January, we didn’t have any trouble finding a very nice spot.  Only five or six other campers were here, which were a few vans, a couple of tents, and a couple of cars which may have been people parked for the day, or people might have slept overnight in them.  We took the dogs for a quick walk around the area, and settled in for the night.  In the morning, we took the dogs for a longer walk around the area, which is quite interesting because Rocky Springs is an abandoned town, so besides getting to walk on the genuine Natchez Trace, we could see the remains of the village in the forest.  Tom had called the more southern motorcycle shop and found that they didn’t have the battery we need, so he decided to call the shop we’d visited before visiting Jackson to see if they could order it.  They could, and said it should be ready to be picked up by Friday, so we decided to spend most of the week at Rocky Springs Campground, hiking the Natchez Trace, doing some of the endless camper maintenance jobs, and relaxing.

The park surrounding the Natchez Trace Parkway is very narrow, so we didn’t have a lot of hiking opportunities.  On Tuesday, we hiked around the immediate Rocky Springs area, and visited the still standing church and its cemetery.  We were again struck by the number of graves of children in the cemetery, and pondered how the anti-vaxxers can continue to rant against vaccines when it’s so obvious that they’ve made such a huge difference in child mortality rates.  We looked at cisterns and safes, which are about all that’s left of the village.  The signs give lots of reasons why the village failed and was abandoned, but the most obvious was that the settlers were trying to farm in soil so prone to erosion that the entire area is a series of washed out ravines where even the trees can’t hold the ground together. ​

​Back at the campground, we talked to other campers and watched how this free national park campground is used.  We’ve found a lot of other free places to park on our trip, but this is our first free official campground.  It’s different, and is making us a little bit sad.  At the pay campgrounds, we’ve found a lot of vacationers in a variety of vehicles, from cars with tents to vans to Class Cs to the big fancy expensive Class As.  Here, we’re not finding a lot of vacationers.  There’s one other guy traveling with his old dog in a self-built utility trailer camper, and a family camping in a couple of tents, but they’re the only other vacation-type travelers.  We met a couple pulling a travel trailer who are making their way north to welcome their new great-grandchild, who stay at places like this for a few days when it’s on their route, so they’re sort of vacationers.  A few other vans or travel trailers have pulled in for a night or two and then moved on, which is probably about what we would do if we weren’t waiting for the moto part.  But then, there’s one old guy who’s living out of his car and sleeping in his tent and moving from campground to campground as his 14-day limits expire.  He’s one of a number of gray-haired men we’ve seen and talked to, traveling alone, and living out of their vehicles which are mostly vehicles like 20-year old Toyota Corollas or Honda Civics.  For the three nights we’ve been here, we’ve noticed three or four cars a night, always different, being driven by older men, traveling alone, who pull in, sit outside for a few hours, then sleep in their cars, before driving away early the next morning.  This is the type of thing you don’t see unless you take the time to stop and look and think, and we’re a little ashamed of ourselves that, like most other Americans, we’ve managed to not SEE it for so long, even though it’s right in front of our faces.  I don’t know that there’s anything any individual can do about it, but at the very least seeing it might affect how people vote, since it seems to be an unacknowledged problem in the US.  I don’t know how many of our guests at our jungle lodge in Belize commented on how uncomfortable they were with the poverty in Belize, and it’s probably a good thing we are no longer in that business because I think I’d be recommending that those guests take a drive through Alabama and Mississippi and stay at some of the free campgrounds to see that the same poverty is in their own backyards.  I’m also going to stop making jokes about being homeless and living in our vehicle, because when you see people who are really doing it, it isn’t very funny.

​Even with the walk, we got ourselves together, waved goodbye to some neighbors who had pulled in after dark Friday night, and by noon we were headed for Montgomery.  We decided to take the “blue highways,” so it took us a few hours to get there, and we pulled in around 4PM, which would have been 5PM had we not crossed the line between the Eastern and Central time zones.  Getting into downtown Montgomery was easy, and because the streets were deserted for the weekend, we found easy street parking so we could get out and walk around.  Our first impression of the capitol and the area surrounding it was that it was very white.  All of the buildings are white, and while it made the area feel very clean, it also made it feel sterile.  Some of that could have been, for us, the contrast to the whimsical Tallahassee which was our previous capitol.  Montgomery’s capitol area doesn’t have any park surrounding it, but when we walked to the front of the building, which was opposite where we parked, we found a very energetic effort being made to set up a stage and podium in front of the capitol’s steps, and all the streets were closed.  We’re not sure what was going on, although since the next day was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, we suspect that the city was having an official celebration complete with speeches from dignitaries.  This all helped soften our initial impression, but since the entire walk around the block took us about a half hour, we left still feeling like Montgomery is less than the strongly beating heart of the state.

​We put Prairie Creek Campground, the Army Corp of Engineers campground where we had made our reservation, into the GPS and pulled in less than an hour later after being treated to a beautiful sunset on the road.  We hadn’t even realized that the Army Corp of Engineering campgrounds were a thing, but we will definitely be looking for them in the future.  They’re not free, but they’re also relatively inexpensive at about $25 a night for complete hookups.  And, Prairie Creek was really well laid out and well maintained, and all of the camp sites were on the riverfront since the campground is located inside an oxbow.  Because this campground is primarily for fishermen and hunters in the surrounding national lands, it doesn’t have a lot of hiking trails, but on Sunday morning we took a walk through the campground and out to the dam and lock which allows boat traffic between Montgomery and Mobile.  We filled our water tanks and prepared to head towards Jackson.

​While we were at Prairie Creek, we realized that the pervasive petroleum smell we’d noticed in the camper was not from a motorcycle gas tank, but was from leaking propane lines.  So, before heading for Jackson the next day to check off Mississippi’s capital, we needed to pick up replacement lines, and refill our propane tanks.  We didn’t actually plan to get all the way to Jackson in one day, which turned out to be a good thing since finding parts and propane in the south on a Sunday which was also MLK, Jr.’s birthday wasn’t especially straightforward.  However, in our quest, we were directed to check a couple of spots in Selma, which made us go where we hadn’t intended to go, so we saw the tornado damage first hand.  That made us really glad we had stayed in Georgia for an extra couple of days, not only to give the tornados time to pass, but also for Selma and the surrounding communities to start assessing the damage.  I wanted to say “cleaning up,” or maybe “recovering from” here, but three days after the storm, those words didn’t yet apply.  I didn’t take any photos mostly because it felt disrespectful to be taking pictures of others’ massive tragedy, but also because  I had already seen photos of what we were looking at in national and international news outlets, and the photos definitely didn’t capture the depth of the destruction.  We saw utility poles snapped off with all of their wires in a major tangle.  Entire buildings were flattened, with stuff strewn as far as we could see.  One large tree had all of its branches ripped off and an entire metal roof was literally wrapped around it - and I’m using “literally” the way it’s supposed to be used here, since the roof was rolled around it like a tortilla around a burrito.  We ended up not stopping in Selma since we felt compelled to just get out of the way, although industrious residents were running restaurants and other businesses out of tents and people seemed to be in generally good spirits.


We eventually found an open Tractor Supply Co and got butane and parts, and continued on our way to a free campground in the Bienville National Forest just short of Jackson.  According to iOverlander, the campground was designed for horses which means it’s truck and trailer friendly, and it was easily accessible from the state highway, and it had all good reviews, so we thought it would be perfect.  There was a warning that the water was most likely turned off for the winter, so we were very surprised when we pulled up to the site and found a locked gate with an “Area Closed for the Season” sign.  At this point it was almost dark, so we took a quick look at one of the camping apps and found that Roosevelt State Park was only about 10 miles away, towards Jackson.  We pulled in there in the dark, and found that the park office was shut down.  There was an honesty cash box, but also a warning that campers shouldn’t just pay and pull into an empty spot because it’s possible that the spot was reserved.  I pulled up the campground on the ReserveAmerica booking engine and found that they only allowed you to reserve two days in the future, not right now, and that Walk Up was the only option for same day reservations.  With no person or place to walk up to, I scanned the campsite list and found campsites available for walk up.  We left our fee in the honesty box and drove the long two miles to the campground to look for one of the walk up available sites.  The campground was surprisingly busy for a Sunday night in January, but in the end we found a nice site on the lake and figured since we were only there for one night we shouldn’t be in anyone’s way.  It turned out that this site also had full hookups plus a sewer, so we plugged in our heater even though it wasn’t super cold, tapped into the city water so we could keep our tanks full, and even ran a load of laundry since we had the sewer drain and didn’t have to worry about filling our gray tank.  We pulled out in the morning heading for Jackson.

We left our friends in Jefferson, Georgia, yesterday afternoon, hoping to get ahead of the storm that was crossing the country coming from California all the way east. We decided to head south to Macon since our next planned stop is Montgomery, Alabama, and Macon is due east of Montgomery. We pulled into Macon after dark and decided to stay at the same Cabela’s that we had stayed at last weekend.  Our plan was to head west to Montgomery today, but we looked at the radar map and saw that we would have to pass through the band of heavy thunderstorms heading across the country.  So, we decided to sit it out for a day, and looked at iOverlander and found a free campground in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest. We did some shopping we had to do and then found this easily accessible campground. There’s nobody here but us. Before the rain started, we took the dogs for a nice 3 mile hike and were then safely in the camper before the big band of storms hit us.  We plan to take another hike tomorrow when it’s nicer, spend tomorrow night here, and then head for Montgomery on Saturday. 

We left Erik and Rhea’s on Wednesday morning to go have lunch with my cousins Barb and Dale in Punta Gorda, with tentative plans to head back for another night in Erik and Rhea’s yard.  However, cousins being cousins, despite the fact that we haven’t seen Barb and Dale in decades, the conversation and the laughter never really paused, and lunch transitioned to snacks and drinks in their lovely house overlooking a lake, which transitioned into a night in their driveway rather than a drive back to Sarasota.  

We left in the morning to head north with our next major stop being Tallahassee, which we knew we wouldn’t make in a day.  We looked for places with hiking trails along our route, and found Payne’s Creek State Park, which is a small park dedicated to some people who were killed by the Indians.  Putting aside the question of whether it’s a nice thing to memorialize people who were killed because they were trying to take somebody else’s land, it was a nice little park and we had a good walk with the dogs.

We left Payne’s Creek and made it as far as a Walmart in Dunnellon, where we passed a peaceful night before heading to the nearby Goethe State Forest for a hike in the morning.  Goethe State Forest was already on our radar because Tom had competed at the Black Prong CDE in the state forest with Shawn before we moved to Belize, so we knew we would find some good hiking opportunities.  We were not disappointed.

We had a quick lunch in the camper, and left Goethe, heading for Tallahassee. We took back roads (meaning not interstates) the whole way, and were a little surprised when we were only 10 miles from the Capitol building and we were still in the pine forest.  But, as we got closer, we saw more signs of civilization and the last few miles were more of what we expect when we drive into a capital city.  We drove into the area shortly before 6PM, and were delighted to find a gravel parking lot just a couple of blocks from the capitol which was wide open and free between 6PM and 6AM.  We parked, got the dogs out, and walked up a small hill to the capitol.

The word that comes to mind to describe the Florida Capitol is “whimsical.”  Most of the capitols we’ve visited look like they were designed to command respect and be impressive.  With its candy-striped window awnings and cartoon-like carving of the state seal, Florida’s capitol is more like something from a fairy-tale about capitol buildings.  The entire area was also super clean, and while that should have been a positive impression, it also made it feel sterile.  We didn’t see anybody walking around, and the park near the building was white cement blocks with astroturf, not real grass.  It looks beautiful, but feels sterile.  On the other hand, this lends to the not-really-real feeling, so we’re still not sure what the architects’ intentions were.  

Since it was dark by the time we left the capitol district, we decided to find a place to boondock in Tallahassee.  On iOverlander, the Tallahassee area is riddled with potential boondocking spots since the city doesn’t appear to have any overnight parking restrictions.  In fact, even the lot where we’d parked in the middle of the city was listed as a safe place to stay.  We wanted to get out of the city so we headed towards shopping land, with our first stop at a Target.  The manager there said that parking was allowed, but he didn’t recommend it because of a problem with homeless people and vandalism in the area.  We always take the advice of the locals, so we took his advice and headed a couple of miles down the road to a Walmart, where we were met with the same response.  We then called a Cabela’s which is slightly out of the city, and were told that their lot was fine to park in, although they turn off the lights at night so it would be dark.  We found the darkness to be refreshing, and ended up having a quiet night along with a few other vans and campers who had apparently found the same thing we did about the “normal” overnight stopping places.

While we were stopped, we started looking around for places to hike in the morning.  Years ago I had competed at the Red Hills Horse Trials, which I knew was near Tallahassee.  I didn’t realize it was held at a city park, and that the city park was huge.  So, in the morning we drove to the Elinor Klapp-Phipps Park and had a great five-mile hike through the woods.  

We left Tallahassee with the intention of getting back to our friends in Georgia, but it was starting to get dark around Macon so we stopped for the night, again at a Cabela’s.  Tom took a look at available hiking spots for the morning, and found that the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park is in Macon, so that’s where we went in the morning, which turned out great since it was not only a nice place to walk the dogs, but a very interesting National Park to check off our list.  The history of the park extends from Paleo people 17,000 years ago to more modern Native Americans from only 1,000 years ago, to Civil War battles and more current civilization efforts.  After living in Belize and having lots of exposure to Maya history, it was very interesting to us to walk around what feels a lot like the Maya sites in Belize.  Also like Belize, two disrupted mounds are highlighted because one was destroyed to lay railroad tracks, another was reduced in size by about half because its material was used for road fill.  

We left Macon and headed back to our friends Del and Vicky, where we are making our last preparations to head into what will be, for us, the wilderness.  We feel like we are heading into the next phase of our trip, since we won’t be jumping between friends and family, and will be visiting places where we don’t know anybody.  We thought of a few more things we need for this next phase, and ordered them so they’d be waiting for us in Georgia, and we figure with a couple of days of cleaning and organizing, we’ll be ready to hit the road again.

​Dog worries aside, we saw a lot more wildlife during our stay at Big Cypress than we had in the Everglades.  It seemed like you couldn’t even look in any direction without seeing multiple kinds of birds, and usually an alligator or two.  Along the Tamiami Trail, they are right on the edge of the road on the canal bank which runs the entire length of the highway, just sunning themselves.  The trees are full of birds of all sorts, herons and egrets and raptors and crows and many smaller songbirds.  We took a couple of bike rides down the Loop Road, and besides seeing a lot of birds, we’d see alligators just hanging out by the side of the road.  Without the dogs, they didn’t bother me, although we still kept our distance.

We found that everyone at the campground was very nice.  Our next door neighbor was a couple who had driven in their Class A from Ontario, and he and Tom spent a lot of time sharing maintenance tips.  We were surprised how much our Belize build had in common with the Class A, and how many things we actually liked better about ours.  We also met a couple who had a dog who looked a lot like Kismet, so we let the dogs play – on leashes, of course – while we talked.  It turned out Jose was from Puebla, and was missing the traditional New Year’s dinner his mother was making, so I remembered that I still had some mole powder from our friends in Queretaro, and made Jose happy by sharing some so he could tell his mother he was also going to have enchiladas for New Year’s.  Everybody seemed to be enjoying the perfectly beautiful weather, which was sunshine and low 80s during the day, and comfortable nights in the 60s.  ​

​We left the campground on New Year’s Day and headed for friends Erik and Rhea in Sarasota.  A few people had suggested we visit the Clyde Butcher Gallery, and we were disappointed to find that it was closed for the holiday.  The same friends had also suggested the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park, and that did not disappoint.