We woke up very cold this morning. We think it got down to the mid-20s in the forest last night. And since we didn’t have shore power, we couldn’t run our heater. It affected Jay more then me, and he got up early and went “downstairs” under the bed and made himself several cups of chai tea to warm up. I was wearing my slippers, sweat pants, hoodie fleece, and sweatshirt to bed. Jay only had on sock, a lightweight t-shirt, and lightweight pajama pants. Needless to say, when we stopped at Wal-Mart later on, he bought some more clothes.
The main objective was to get to a city with cell phone coverage by 11am as Jay had to call into a meeting for work. So we had a big breakfast of onions, peppers, bacon, and bread with jelly to start us off. Love the little 2-burner stove in the van. No messy campfires when you’re freezing cold.
In the light of day, Jay discovered that there was indeed a pit toilet in the camp, which was nice. “Nice” is in quotation marks, but it beats squatting in the bushes somewhere as far as I’m concerned. We say absolutely no one the entire time we were in the camp. Definitely a nice stop, although not much of a view of anything other than forest.
We booked it on up to Gadsden, AL and into a Wal-Mart parking lot for Jay’s conference call. I went in and did some shopping, picking up a bit of food and some odds and ends like a digital indoor/outdoor thermometer and long johns and wool socks for Jay.
The entire stop took way longer then it should have (in my opinion) and made me feel like we were way behind schedule. So we decided to push on again and head out of Alabama into Tupelo, MS. The drive across northern Alabama through rolling hills and farm country was gorgeous. But because we were running late, we ended up driving in the dark again and without our instrument panel. Thank goodness for our GPS which gives the current speed. Otherwise, driving at night would have been very, very difficult.
We ended up heading to Tombigbee State Park, just a bit south of Tupelo. Our GPS came in handy when navigating as the park was on a series of twisy, windy roads that we never would have found otherwise. I’ve decided this is where GPSs are very useful: the micro-navigation. It really doesn’t help me much getting from town to town. I’ve got a big road atlas that does just fine for that. But navigating in the cities is where the big atlas fails and the GPS unit excels.
We pulled into the park at about 6pm and no one was at the entrance to take fees. So we drove in and the sign said a park ranger would be around to register us and collect fees at some point. There was a small loop with maybe 16 or 17 RV sites. It’s a pretty unremarkable park except for the fact that it’s quite close to a major city (Tupelo, MS). But, 
there were only 3 other RVs in the park, so we picked a site away from them and backed in. The park had electricity, so we could plug in our van and keep the fridge cool and run our incandescent light fixtures. Also a heater if we needed it!
Had taco salad for dinner with the last of the tomatoes out of the garden at home. Jay was so thrilled to find a hot shower that he went and took a hot shower after dinner with plans to take another before we leave tomorrow morning. It’s the little things in life, I tell you.