The Travels Begin

Our US Border crossing went fairly well and quick. At the booth the young lady had all kinds of questions like where do you live? Do you have a house? Is it empty - no we have a renter - why? It helps our income - she says why don't you get a job? This was a good time to shut-up! We carry a binder with all our notes about packing, travel and destinations. She asked to see it and spent several minutes flipping through the whole thing. The next inspection is the agricultural stuff where they were more thorough as well - we did carry illegal garlic bulbs - if you want to bring garlic they must be peeled separate cloves. Then we went through the "denied entry" and "paroled in" process again - they have improved the process from last year...the whole crossing process took about 40 minutes.
It was a two day trek from the NW corner to the SE corner of Minnesota. Our planned scenic route was the Great River Road which runs from Manitoba to the Gulf of Mexico although the Mississippi River only begins at Itasca State Park in Minnesota. We had two pleasant days of meandering along the bends of the Mississippi, going through towns and country sides, when we decided we had enough of slow travel. Cruising these roads are a lot better for motorcyles and sports cars than a truck and trailer.

 

 

One rainy night we had these green nuts falling on the roof of our trailer at random causing us to jerk each time.

At Bellevue, Iowa we discovered a great campground and a scenic and clean town with a great view of the river, dam and lock.
The downside of our first four days travel was frequent rains with heavier showers each time we needed to set up at our campsite.
Sunday we chose to have a longer driving day so that we could drive through St. Louis on a day when the roads were not as busy as driving during the week.
Our next night stop was at St. Joe State Park in Missouri which is a park catering to the ATV crowd.  They ride the off-road vehicles in what once was a lead mining area. We picked a camp-site that was just vacated leaving us with a welcome fire which later gave us great s'mores for dessert.

 

We changed our travel plans of staying in Arkansas and instead travelled our familiar roads through the corner of Tennessee and into Mississippi. At the Mississippi Welcome Center we found out that due to the Federal Government shut downs all facilities along the Natchez Trace Parkway were closed, but the roadway was open for travel. We then needed to change our night stop and headed to Trace State Park near Tupelo (Elvis's birthplace).

Jim working on blog post script while enjoying our beautiful lake side campsite where we stayed two nights. This was our favorite campground of our travels this trip.

For our last two nights on the road we stayed at Paul B Johnson State Park just south of Hattiesburg and enjoyed the southern heat. The entrance road to the campground takes you through the overflow water of the lake. A unique way to remember this place.