We headed out of Tombigbee State Park and headed for Helena, AR. There are only a few places you can cross the Mississippi, so we couldn’t drive willy nilly and hope to end up someplace useful. So we gassed up and headed off down the highway. Went west through Oxford, MS and then curved slightly north. That particular area is almost exclusively agricultural, from what we could see. However, there was a beautiful bridge crossing the Mississippi River.
Then we found a Wal-Mart and parked for a while so Jay could take apart the dash and try to get our instrument panel lights back. After he fiddled for awhile, he decided that the burning smell from 2 nights ago was the headlight dimmer switch which had burned up. He also discovered that the amperage on that circuit was out of control. Turning the headlights on (with the instrument panel off) was ok. But as soon as he turned the dimmer switch to make the lights brighter, the amperage shot up beyond 5 amps (the size fuse in that circuit).
So we drove down the road to an autoparts store where Jay could pick up a new headlight dimmer switch. The good thing about having a very old, very popular van is that everyone carries parts for it and we don’t have to worry about special orders. We also picked up a Haynes manual for the van, which we’ve been needing anyway.
Jay wanted to do some more diagnostic work and figure out exactly where the short was before burning up another switch. So we took some crazy backroads 
to the St. Francis National Park (Beech Pt. campground). While very slow because of the roads, it was a pretty drive through lots of fields that were just barely green. 
It’s another undeveloped campground with pit toilets, but it’s cheap at $3 a night. And the view is pretty spectacular. If you zoom in on the map above, you can see how we’re basically camped on a spit of land that sticks out into Bear Lake with water on three sides of us.
The only problem was that a front blew through last night, and we’ve had so much rain we haven’t been able to get out and explore. So Jay asked for 2 hours to work on the van and so here we sit. I think the front is about pushed on east, so we’ll head out soon.