Heading South

        Nancy had a meeting on the morning of Nov. 4 in Elm Grove (near Milwaukee), so we drove there and I hung out in the RV while she was in the meeting. As soon as it was over, we headed south and spent the night with Dan in St. Louis. The next day we continued south towards the Gulf Coast. We stopped to de-winterize the RV in a Flying J truck stop near Memphis. "Winterizing the RV" refers to draining the fresh water tank and hot water heater and putting in "pink stuff" (propylene glycol antifreeze) to protect the water system from freezing. I had done this prior to going to Europe, in case Madison had a cold spell while we were gone. De-winterizing involves draining the pink stuff and putting in bleach to sanitize the fresh water tank and plumbing. Driving on into Mississippi we noticed that several rivers were overflowing their banks. We stopped to camp at Hugh White State Park, near Grenada. When we got there we found the campground was mostly underwater; there were about a dozen people camping on higher ground. The ranger explained that they had gotten 3 inches of rain the night before and the creek backed up. We were welcome to stay, but he recommended that we camp on high ground in case they got more rain. We found a reasonable site and spent the night. It didn't rain that night and the water level dropped so we could see more of the campground the next morning.

        The next day we headed to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and camped in Biloxi. The Jefferson Davis Presidential Library (in case you have forgotten, he was president of the Confederacy) and his "retirement home" was nearby, so we visited it. I didn't really know much about him, so I was struck by the fact that, in the 1850s Davis was the Secretary of War and had done quite a bit to modernize and improve the U.S. Army. After the South seceded from the Union and Davis became the president of the Confederacy, he had to pull together an army and fight the Union army, which he had just worked hard to modernize. Ironic! I'm sorry that I don't have any photos of the library or his home, but I seem to have lost them.

The next stop was the Bellingrath gardens near Mobile, Alabama. These gardens are very impressive and worth stopping to see.
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The large pond with wire figures representing different animals, Christmas, etc.

Some of the bushes and trees were lit with miniature Christmas lights. As it started to approach dusk, the lights became noticeable. It was very pretty.
 

After Mobile, we headed for Pensacola to visit the Naval Aviation Museum there. As we drove on to the Naval Air Station property, we noticed that there was a lot of traffic, with cars pulling off and parking just about anywhere and people standing around watching the sky. When we got to the museum, their parking lot was filled, but we found a spot to park on the dirt field nearby and asked people there what was going on. It turned out that this was the first day of a 2-day air show and the Blue Angels were due to fly shortly. So we got our our lawn chairs, joined the people and waited for the show.

The Blue Angels were fantastic - up to six jets flying at very high speed in close formation! I don't see how they can fly so close together without running into each other. We spent about an hour watching them and then headed into the museum.

The museum is an incredible collection of various naval planes, from very early models to the latest jets. Very impressive!

Having just seen the Blue Angels fly, I couldn't resist sitting in the cockpit of a mockup of one of their jets.
 

Next stop is Cape Canaveral to see a Space Shuttle launch. Click here to go to the next page.