On The Road to Mississippi, We Stopped in Grand Cane

After surviving the night in Ballinger, TX, we stopped at Walmart for supplies and headed toward Waco.  Although we got stuck in some traffic on the city loop, there, it was not too horrible of a driving experience.  K was admiring the institute of higher learning (Baylor apparently), while I tried not to be a bother to C, who was driving in that mess.   We took a pit stop after and decided to shoot for Palestine for the night, but the RV Park in Palestine had no vacancies.  K called ahead to the one in Rusk.  They had full hook-ups, showers, and a laundry.  We located it okay, but C was a little tired.  

The places we've stayed overnight on our trip have all had something interesting about them.  The first night, on the side of the highway, there was a decaying coyote near where we parked. The RV Park in Roswell had a pay phone on the wall in the laundry room.  The Ballinger RV Park was kind of spooky and had trains going very close by and honking their horns a lot, which K slept right through.  HONK!! BLAST!! It is 2 AM!  The RV Park in Rusk, Texas, had green grass, a concrete pad to park on, full hook-up, but there were no code locks on the laundry room or recreation building.  One had to walk around to the front of the owners' house/office, up seven steps on the porch, and get the keys off a hook there, then walk to the "Rec Hall" where the bathroom was located.  It was a modular building with four steps up on to the porch, then musty rec room with a bathroom in the NE corner of the big room.  It was just like any bathroom you would find in any modular home.  They didn't have showers, they had a shower.  The interesting thing about this "Rec Room" is in the SE corner there was one of those amazing sit-down hair dryer chairs, like the kind every beauty parlor had in the 1960s - 70s.  Poor K, she took a shower, but by the time she got back to our RV, she was all sweaty from the humidity and all that walking for key business.  I slept better at the Rusk RV park, then we headed out in the morning and into Louisianna.  We continued on Highway 84 clear across LA.  We took a brief side-trip to Grand Cane, to visit a quilt shop there.  At Mansfield, you go north about seven miles to HQnM (Homemade Quilts N More).  

We had such a nice visit with Pat, the owner, and her friend, Jeanie.  C shopped for amazing fabrics, which there was quite a lot of.    K and I visited with Pat and Jeanie.  Karen took a photo of me with the green sewing machine Pat learned to sew on, a long time ago, and a photo of me at the long-arm quilt machine.  Oh, you can see the reflection of our RV, in the photo above.

We had a great time in Grand Cane, then we got back onto the road.  We crossed the Mississippi River at Natchez.  Natchez, MS, is a lot smaller than I imagined and we got through it in a blink of an eye . . . and no RV parks to be found.  We drove on.  K finally got a call back from a man who had the RV park in Magnolia, MS.  We headed that way in a huge downpour.  Then suddenly we were out of it and on to dry pavement.  At our designated spot, at The Magnolia RV Park, there was a tire swing.  We had a great view of a creek from our RV.  

The next day we drove on to north of Mobile, Alabama, and then dropped down into the panhandle of Florida.  When we got onto I-10 it began to pour.  We finally made it to the rest stop, just prior to the last Milton exit.  M met us there, and C was able to take a 20-minute break from driving.   We finally got to Mary's house!