Andalusia, AL

 Another nice driving day.  A bit overcast to start but the only recent use of the wipers has been with the washer.  

260 miles is a bit longer than usual for us but there was a big gap in the HH map in our direction.  No matter.  

This morning Timmy brought over two cups of hot tea for us, yup, delivered to the camper.  Peach tea for Carlene and smoky peach tea for me.  We bought a bag of peach tea.  It was a fun and educational HH stay.  

On the road we had 4 lane Rt US-84 in MS then two lane Rt 84 in AL.  All good roads, not much traffic. It’s Saturday of course. 

Here at the River Falls Diner and Market we are in a good size gravel parking lot beside Rt 82 but it’s Level!  Nice market.  So far we only bought some ice cream, we’ll look again in the morning.  They have fresh coffee at 8!  Also a good assortment of salsa and such.  Hot pepper jelly too.  Their own label.

We spent the late afternoon searching for a campground for the coming week.  We’re due at the shoot camp Tuesday 4/7, so we have a week to spend before that.  Found one we have stayed at a couple times. Also have to play the Rx refill game again.  Geez.  Hope it works better this time.  

A comment from the comments; all the flower photos are Carlene’s.  Other photos are a blend of ours.

The MS tea bushes 

Alabama

We got involved in the camp search and didn’t take any daylight photos of the camp!

Brookhaven, MS

 The Great Mississippi Tea Co. In Brookhaven MS is a good HH.  It is a tea grower, it has been 14 yers on a former dairy farm that has been in Timmy’s family for over 100 years.  He came home to help care for grandparents and was told he and his brother now had farm.  They didn’t want cattle but settled on growing tea.  They have 7 acres planted and still have at least 20 acres left of the old farm.  They sold off a lot of the land that wasn’t needed for this venture.  Timmy gave us a tour of the crop land and the processing facility.  He also explained the production and processing of tea.  They do several kinds and a lot of it, green tea, yellow tea, black tea etc. is all from the same plant but with different harvesting and processing.  We had no idea!  He is going to bring us some hot tea for breakfast.

We had half interstate and half US-84 four lane today.  US-84 looked just like an interstate, even bypassed the villages.  In this case we didn’t gain a thing by not being on the big I.

We stopped for fuel and lunch in Jonesville, LA!  And just to make me feel even more at home there were two big corn sprayers there too!  And their nurse trucks.  Ahh, the memories.  With two rigs, if I played it right I could get a week’s work done in that stop.  If you didn’t know me that long ago I made a living keeping tabs on those guys (and others) for the Ag Agency.

Spraying 4” corn in March!!

Camping beside the tea trees

Texas Toadflax

Red Dead-nettle

False Garlic

More Texas Toadflax

Hairy Buttercup

Lady Banks’ Rose

Frierson, Louisiana

It was an overcast day today.  No likelihood of rain but lots of clouds.  Green grass everywhere.  Water in the rivers.  Carlene, I don’t think we’re in Arizona anymore!  8 days in TX, 5 days crossing it.  Now here we are in Louisiana.  The ODK Farm is a little bit of everything.  Deer raising, blackberry growing, jelly making.  Chip met us at the gate in his side-by-side to guide us in and get us parked.  Then he went back to making sourdough bread.  At 5 we went to the house to sample his jam, jelly & fig preserves.  All good, we bought a couple jellies and a dozen eggs.  Met Debbie later when she came out to say hello.  Turns out that they were traveling in VT last October.  Stayed in Stowe and wandered about northern New England.

We stayed off the interstate today, it took some doing it convince the GPS to do that, but managed.  The US highways are mostly 4 lane or good generously wide 2 lane roads.  Fine for trailer traveling.  Tomorrow is another 200 or so mile day to another HH, this time it’s a tea company in MS.  This area is roughly a state a day.

ODK Farm:

Hanging around Ft. Parker

We started the day by finishing the trail we started last night.  Drove over to where we left off and walked out the rest of the way to the boat launch.  It’s a couple miles one way from camp to the end.  That amounted to 2.5 miles today.  Skye got to splash around in the river by the boat launch.  It wasn’t being used.  

Then over to the swimming and boating area where we found Skye a good place to swim.  Again, nobody else there.  

Followed that with a drive over to the restored Fort Parker site. That was fun.  A fair sized fort with furnished living quarters all of 1836 period.  It is the site of a multi- tribe raid that captured 9 yo Cynthia Ann Parker. She eventually married the Comanche chief and had 3 children. One of those was Quannah Parker who later became a prominent Comanche chief himself.  

As I looked through a gate I saw a CAS setup next door.  Permanent facades and steel targets left out, all set up.  Turns out that the shoot the third weekend of the month, so just last weekend.  And the fort has camping too.  And theirs is flat!  We’ll have to keep all that in the trip notes for future reference.   

We stopped at Sonic for some ice cream.  They are not DQ for sure.  I’ll have to be desperate to go back.  

So tomorrow we head out east some more.  Staying at HH in Edwards LA.  That’s a bit south of Shreveport.  

Check out the leather hinges, and the manner of latching the window closed.

Interesting chimney 

Tenpetal Anemone

Old Plainsman

My new Doc McCoy Official Flower!

Spiderwort

Yaupon Holly

And the sun is setting on our time in Texas.

It’ll have been one full week.

In case you are wondering just where we are

We are the blue dot

And the Last few days in Luckenbach