Road Trip Day 4
2006 Road Trip Vacation – Tuesday 2006-09-26
- Tuesday morning and another sunny day, there are some clouds in the distance but, nice and sunny this morning… I’m in
- Dyersvilles like a lot of small towns I’ve seen with a central square and courthouse… maybe they’re the county seat – people hanging around – reminds me of Joliet with people hanging around the courthouse… who knows what that’s all about…
- Median income in Dyersville is $28k – significantly less than
- Starting out this morning on 51 South…
- A cotton field is really an illusion for someone from the north who’s never seen one… looks like snow on the ground… it’s pretty in a way
- Apparently Alex Haley is from around here somewhere… the gal at the desk said “ya know the roots guy?”
- Another interesting thing is there are cotton balls laying along side the road… no cotton fields right where I am but cotton is all over the sides of the roads.
- So all along the edges of the cotton fields are posts with jugs on them – dunno what they are – some sort of mixture in them? Insect attractant – pollination – bowl weevils? Always heard about weevils growing up…. I dunno…
- Just had to switch to 88 west – one thing I seeing is that it’s really wet and muddy – dunno if it’s natural or due to flooding…
- Ok so I’ve run into Chickesaw national wildlife refuge
- River really moves fast here – u can see the currents – assume it’s pretty shallow – the map show that this part of the river is pretty wriggly – interestingly enough cotton find there way here too – unless that’s just crud floating down the river… I’m sure the storms have the river carrying more crap than usual
- So while it’s a possibility the park is bigger than this entrance, this is just a boat ramp…
- Coming out of the chickesaw national wildlife refuge, south along the river, found a turtle sunning himself – I feel like I have the place to myself – I haven’t seen anyone out here… really, I haven’t!
- Finally I see a truck parked along side the road and it’s a highway department truck…
- I can’t imagine 150 years ago as the pioneers and civil war troops – I can’t imagine trying to run an army though this area – had to be grueling – the distances they covered were amazing – says a lot of those people’s drive and fortitude.
- A tractor on the road up here – we’ll see what’s going on…
- Just a couple of guys working for the hwy dept cutting the grass – or really crap, a bunch of crap – easy to understand how it could become overgrown with all the moisture in this area…
- I‘m at one of those junctions that has no sign – the road I’m on pretty much dead ends into a river – I can go left or right – left appears to be east… I’m guessing if I go right I’ll dead end into the
- One of the things I was thinking about as I was coming out of some of these parks is that some of the signs basically chastise you for going off the trail… stay on the trail! Basically making the statement that everything’s been explored for you, just go where we tell you to go… one of the things I admire about past times is the freedom to explore… to go where you want to go when you want to go there – kinda the nature of my trip, but I’m following paths people have already laid down, but maybe that’s the nature of the times we live in… most everything’s been explored and found …
- I came upon another left/right intersection…. I’m going south – going east again…
- Ah – finally a car – and not a state one at that!
- Just passed a pickup with a couple of guys dressed in camouflage with their guns propped in the truck bed…. Interesting…
- You can tell that this road has had a lot of water on it with all of the gravel and junk running across it… everynow and then a pot hole to swerve… good reason to go slow and carefully – 1) no cell coverage and 2) there’s no way I could explain to anyone where I am…
- While I’m driving down this road with the radio off and windows down so I can hear the sounds outside… uh – another crossroad – gravel doh!
- So these recordings are like my virtual bread crumbs so if I dead end I can replay the snippets in reverse order and get back out the way I came… this road actually has a name… Morris road – so I’m angling east on Morris road…
- Just saw a really cool bird fly into the forrest - with a fan tail and charcoal and white horizontal stripes
- Just did a 3 point turn to take a picture of the chickesaw sign and everytime I do a 3 point turn it reminds me of a time when I was growing up in
- Before I left the park I pulled off the side and just sat and listened to the sounds…. Some of the birds I recognized others I didn’t – kinda a cool kinda creepy – clearly birds barking, crows, blue jays, cardinals… it’s interesting how the birds know when you’re around and go quiet – others will yell at you, like the wood peckers back home will start yelling when you get near…. So peaceful
- I know what was in Halls – some 25th celebration of some legendary B52 bomber being displayed there… .the southern…. What…
- Ah! The
- The girl at the desk… girl!, she was probably my age… but, she said the paper had a photo of the original pilot of the
- I found myself back out on the highway and I believe I’m traveling in a generally southeasterly direction… it’s a very twisty road… clearly not well traveled, but very scenic…
- I’m at the intersection of hwy 19 West… I’m heading west now…
- Oh yeah – and people wave back at you in
- I’m in an area where these viney things have gone nuts and cover everything… the trees, buildings, signs… I dunno what they are but they’ve taken control of damn near everything here…
- Rock on dude! there’s a crop duster flying here spraying the cotton fields!
- And it’s a good thing I rolled up my windows cause I just got crop dusted!
- And that’s another thing I’ve never seen before, and I’ve certainly never been dusted before – In iowa we used to walk around with sprayers and wands and spray the weeds in the bean fields, or we’d ride in seats on a bar mounted to the front of a tractor that also had a large tank with round-up and water mixture to spray the weeds…
- Sarah Evans music playing
- Alright so, uh, another road closed to through traffic and now that I look at the map, 19 doesn’t appear to really go anywhere… looks like I’m going to have to double back and find another way… .i really am going to have to go back to 51 south and find another way, because as I look at this damn thing, none of the highways that go west around here follow through and turn south… I gotta go and do some highway driving…
- A lot of houses here are built on stilts about 10 feet off the ground…(route 18)… clearly says something of the nature of the river around here
- Alrighty then, I’m back on 51 south…
- On 51 south I notice that there have been at least a couple of people with vegetable and fruit stands along side the road out of the back of their trucks… the last one was a pile of tomatos and the one before was watermelons and pumpkins…
- So here’s a turn – heading west on 87 to see fort pillow state historic park
- On the way to fort pillow is western
- The trail to fort pillow is pretty cool… on the way there lots of birds calling – saw a deer bound off… lot’s of trees – I don’t even know what they are.. you always have this romantic notion of seeing bullet wounds on trees from the civil war, but the reality is that either the trees are long gone, or the growth is so high in the canopy that you couldn’t see anything now… but the fort is there – it was a union fort – apparently the confederates won this battle – I guess I should have known that there were union forts in this area but I never thought of it… the fort consisted of basically a burm or levee with openings for parrot guns… uh – so they have 3 of these parrot guns still in the fort.. it’s pretty cool to see some of this history…
- I’m glad that I brought these baby wipes – it’s fairly warm and mostly humid here – the trek through the woods left me pretty sweaty and as dense as everything is hear you wind up getting buggy too…
- So one thing I do at home when I go hiking in the woods is a thorough check for ticks it’s pretty common to find wood or deer ticks after a walk through the woods or grass, but so far I haven’t found any on this trip, so I’m wondering are deer ticks a northern Midwestern thing or what?
- I’ve been thinking it would be kook to plot the route I’m taking on this trip and keep it as a planner… I can easily see myself doing this again, either departing from home or flying somewhere to drive around – this is a world of fun and for people that like adventure I’d highly recommend this… it would be cool to do this once or twice a year and keep a map overlaying your routes every year so you could see where you’ve been…
- I suppose that would be one nice feature of getting a GPS – dunno if they do it but it would be nice to track your route as you drive – it’s kinda big brotheris but as long as you’re the only one that can track it, but cripes, at this point in my life I’d be thrilled if someone were interested enough in what I was doing to chase me down and find me :-p
- I pulled over to the side to take a look at the map to see which way I wanted to take out of here and true to form some Doberman mix looking dog runs out onto the road about 200 feet behind me and starts giving me grief…
- It would be interesting to own some land here and just metal detect on it, I brought my detecter with me but … clearly doing it on state or federal land is frowned upon…kinda in line with my diatribe before about “staying in the path”, but private property… whatever… but it would be fun to do that…
- It’s 1:32 now…
- I just saw a sign that had the road name and then also said it was a dead end… at least they have the courtesy to do that!
- So instead of taking 87 all the way back to 51 I’m going to take 387 east…
- The old rusty buildings are on 387
- Throughout
- This claims to be copper creek road
- So I should mention that short of being a total fool in my wandering that should I become completely lost, I had the forsight to load Microsoft maps on my laptop so I can just whip out my lap top in a pinch and figure out where I need to be…
- And here I am… route 51 south – this actually works out well… and I spy a rest area .5 miles ahead!
- Lisa would like it here in
- In a matter of symmetry there’s also a western tack store on the south side of town as you leave J
- I saw a sign for old hwy 51 so I’m jumping off to see what that’s like
- It turns out that I got off in this town called
- That didn’t last long about a mile and I’m back on route 51
- One of the things I’m noticing that everyone seems to be going the speed limit which is a radical change from what I’m used to…
- Well almost everyone goes the speed limit…
- It seems that
- I just entered the
- Something big is going on cause this is the 4th police car I’ve seen traveling at a high rate of speed in the same direction, so I’m not gonna follow them…
- It’s kinda like
- So as soon as I can find some place to pull over where I can be inconspicuous I’m going to pull out my travelers guide and see what there is to know about
- So this is looking pretty bad, so I’m turning around and getting the hell out of this part of town, 51 kind of disappeared on me… so…
- I’m on this thing called the Danny Thomas something or other… uh… now it’s called
- I’m at the corner of
- I made my way down to the
- It didn’t take long for the target on my forehead to present itself… a man by the name of Jimmy Morris came up to me and proceeded to relay his hard luck story of losing everything to Katrina… he and his wife and 2 daughters, 14 and 7 chased out of New Orleans 9th district, said he was in the Army, 101st… said that he has a degree and has been looking for a job… said his wife broke his femur in the storm, but kept referring to her back as her femur… duh… I’m always torn with these things… said he’d been praying all day and that he’d been stranded on this side of the river and his wife and kids were in a shelter on the other side… said he just got a job as a dishwasher on beale street.… so I gave him 20 bucks for bus fare… if he’s telling the truth – he’s going to the shelter – if not… I have a clear conscience.
- At this point I went to
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