Travel Blog

So I promised you an update on our plans for the summer. We'll get to that next week. Meanwhile, we have been called up to the Big Leagues. That’s right we are leaving here next month to go to MLB Spring Training in Phoenix, AZ. But, instead of knocking balls out of the park with steroid induced muscles, we will be slinging beer and hotdogs at one of the stadium’s concession booths.

We will be working for Aramark, which is the leading operator of stadiums, arenas, and even parks across the country. For us that means, if we like the work, we will have a good chance of going to work at another venue on down the road. Sue is already checking to see who handles the concessions at Heinz Field.

Speaking of Sue, she did survive her week of working Head Start out on the Pueblo. They placed her in the infant room where she fought a loosing battle to not change diapers. She’ll tell you the whole story sometime soon.

In other news, we suffered a loss last week. Our main computer died after five years of valiant service. Our data loss has so far been minimal because we had most of it backed up, but Sue is about ready to kill me for being on “her” computer all the time. So on that note, it is time to shop for a new laptop.

Albuquerque got hit with those storms out of the west and we had some snow last night.

Sue is huddled in bed and refuses to come out until it melts, so I will be your blogger today.

Like Sue said, we are back in Albuquerque. After we left last March we thought we were going to be gone for awhile, but in this economy, the devil you know, and who knows you, seems better than the devil you don't.  Before coming back we tried to find some workamping jobs elsewhere, but there must have been a truckload of applicants for every job. After sevral dozen resumes didn't bring us anything, we called up one of the Temp agencies we have worked for here and they jumped all over us coming back. So we redid the tests and re-activated and now Sue is working as an extra teacher in a Head Start classroom (I know) and I'm doing a landscaping gig.  By the way, Gabe, if you are reading this, do you have to do anything special when you transplant a Sage bush from one side of a yard to another?

In other workamping news, this week Express Employment Professionals in Independance, KS sent a note to all of us who worked for them at Amazon.com saying that Amazon.com is no longer going to be using them to recruit workampers. Apparently Amazon.com is recruiting directly, paying a little more per hour, but not providing a campsite. On the Open Road Forum there is an ongoing discussion of this development, in case you are considering doing Amazon.com this fall.

Tune in next week and we should have an update on our plans for the summer.

You like how I said I'd write more "tomorrow" and now its like two days later? Yeah, me too.

On our way down to Natchez, we decided to get off the interstate and take a non-commercial vehicle route called the Natchez Trace Parkway. It's owned by the National Park Service, and it's quite lovely. The speed limit is only 50 mph, but the roads are superbly maintained, the scenery is great and it has the added bonus of no scary big rigs barrelling down it. According to the NPS website, "the 444-mile Natchez Trace Parkway commemorates an ancient trail used by animals and people that connected southern portions of the Mississippi River, through Alabama, to salt licks in today's central Tennessee." Phil dug around a bit more and found out it was used by the post riders back in 1801 (that's why the parkway sign has the rider on it), and I found out that Lewis from Lewis and Clark mysteriously died on the parkway.

When we reached Natchez, we decided to keep with the State Park theme and pulled into Natchez State Park. We had to kind of go past some scary, shambling houses and shut-down businesses to get into the Park, but once we were in, things got better. We drove around to see what spot we wanted, and we found a great one by the water. Phil did a great job backing into it, and we got all settled in.

We weren't able to make reservations online, so we stopped by the Visitor's Center first.

Now, you already know all about what we did in town, but near the park, there's an ancient Native American ceremonial mound called Emerald Mound that we wanted to check out. The following information is from the NPS website: Designated a National Historic Landmark, Emerald is the second largest ceremonial mound in the United States. Covering eight acres, Emerald Mound was built and used during the Mississippian period between 1250 and 1600 A.D. Its builders were ancestors of the Natchez Indians.

Looks like something is still leaving offerings:

There used to be more little mounds where you see field above, but plowing and erosion took care of those. Sorry there's so many  pictures, I just thought the place was really cool.

That's all I have on Mississippi. We're back in Albuquerque now for our fifth winter. Keep your fingers crossed that we get some work. Times are still really tough, but Albuquerque always seems to come through for us.

I'm going to write about our stay in Natchez, Mississippi, sort of backwards. Today's blog will focus on the town, and tomorrow's will focus on our campground and surrounding attractions.

We started out heading right for the Natchez Visitor Center so they could tell us a bit more about the town.

The place was really nice, and there was a lot of historical information in there. I'm going to be really honest and let you know I did not stand around and read everything there was to read (mainly because there was a big tour group in there encroaching upon my personal space), but I read enough to get excited about walking around to see the big houses all the millionaires had built. (According to Road Trip USA, by Jamie Jensen, prior to the Civil War, Natchez had the most millionaires per capita in the U.S., and most of the antebellum homes are still standing because Natchez surrendered to Grant's army with nary a fight.

So we picked up a walking tour map and headed off. The first big old house we came to was called Rosalie.

Rosalie was built for a cotton mogul in 1823. It sits on a portion of the site of the Natchez Indians massacre of the French in 1729 at Fort Rosalie. And in 1863, General Grant took it over to be his headquarters. It's owned by the Mississippi DAR now, and is open for tours. We didn't go inside because we're cheap, but it was nice to look at from the outside.

Right in the area of Rosalie is Fat Mamas Tamales, which we read had really good food. It was pretty early in the day, so we didn't try its fare, but it looked like a nice place. There's a picture of it running at the top of the page today, but if you're reading this tomorrow, don't go looking for it.

We walked for a bit more and came to Stanton Hall.

This one was built in 1857 for (wait for it) cotton magnate Frederick Stanton. As it seems for all the poor bastards who had these homes built, old Freddy died two years later, so he didn't even get to enjoy the place. But his family lived there until 1894. I think I read it was a college for a little while after that, but a google search to confirm that proved fruitless.

Here's me in front of Stanton Hall to give you and idea of how huge this place is:

Then we walked to get coffee, and we saw another mansion or two, but nothing that made us shiver with excitement (we only had shivers for coffee at that point). When we had caffeined-up, we went up to a church that also serves as great showroom for Natchez in Historic Photographs. There were over 500 old photographs of Natchez dating as far back as 1840. Very cool, and worth a look if you're in town.

On our way back to the Visitor Center and the end of the walk, we passed City Hall and some other municipal buildings that normally I wouldn't mention expcept for this being out if front of one of them:

I looked this up online and read on The Natchez Democrat Online that Tripod showed up at City Hall one day in 1979 and the workers there started to feed him scraps. He had three legs and no teeth, but won over everyone at City Hall, who let him live there from then on. One politician who was allergic to cats actually almost ended up losing his seat when he tried to get Tripod removed from City Hall. He died of an undisclosed illness in 1983, but from what I've read, he left a pretty indelible impression on everyone who met him. Neat story.

And that takes us to our last leg (pun intened) of the tour, which took us by the Mississippi River. The riverboat in the following picture is a casino now, and doesn't go anywhere, but it looks for the picture.

And so ends our tour of Natchez. I will be posting another blog soon with the other things we saw in the area, so stay tuned.

Sorry we've been incommunicado lately. I do have good excuses. I was sick as a dog for about 35 hours a couple of days ago. I figure I was due for a good purging, though, so don't feel too badly for me. Once I puked I started to feel better. But anyhoo, from Tennesse and the farm, we motored not too far south to Holmes County State Park in Mississippi. It was a nice park, and the one ranger we talked to was really friendly, which was a good thing since we ran out of gas and had to bum a ride with him to the nearest diesel place along with our 5-gallon jug. Ooops. It was and wasn't our fault that we ran out of fuel. On the one hand, we did wonder out loud to each other if we should fill up before we took the Natchez Trace Parkway, but we only had a couple hundred miles to drive, and our gauge said we had plenty of fuel to get there, so we decided to just go on ahead without filling up. We got down to our gauge telling us we had about 40 miles left before empty, but that was fine, because at that point, we were pulling into the park. No problem! Well, we think the problem was all the hills and valleys until we got to our spot, because all of a sudden we went from 40 miles to 0, and we weren't even done parking the rig yet. So we parked quickly and unhooked hoping the gauge would go up a bit once we weren't towing the RV anymore (and once we weren't slanted on a big hill). Wrong! It stayed at 0. It was after 5:00 p.m. at this point, and we didn't want to risk running out of gas on a cold night in the middle of nowhere, so we left our poor, empty truck where it was and called it a night. First thing in the morning, we walked over to the Ranger Station and first asked where the nearest diesel place was, and secondly asked if the ranger would be willing to take us there. He was willing right off the bat, and was very nice about it all. I think there may be something to this "southern hospitality" thing afterall.

An RV spot at Holmes County State Park:

That evening, I got sick, so we didn't really do much of anything. But we did get some company that I dragged myself from the bed to go and visit with:

That was my first non-roadkill armadillo sighting, so I was very excited about it. I must have stayed out and watched him for about an hour. Very cute. He didn't seem to mind me too much either. I hope he got some of the good food I vomited up the night before before all the vultures got to it.

It was too cold to go hiking or anything, so we decided to move southward and try to find some warmer temperatures. We are currently in Natchez, Mississippi (sitting in the public library since we can't use our wifi at the state park here), and we did a walking tour of the town today and some other stuff I will share as soon as I get the pictures resized and uploaded.

So that's our story. No one seems too interested in hiring us right now (even though we think we may have two offers coming up for the summer - keep your fingers crossed), so we're just going to keep bumming around various state parks until we run out of money. We'll hopefully have internet capabilities as we go, so we'll try to keep this site as updated as we possibly can.

And my previous post promised some Great Dane pics, so we'll start with this one:

I meant to have the top page pictures be farm pictures to go along with this blog, but Phil's computer is poopy to me, so I couldn't get PhotoShop to cooperate.
But I did manage to get some other pics resized and ready to go, so here's some shots of life on the Anderson Farm.

There is an old RV slab at the end of the road that had electric and sewer (not sure about water), but it hasn't been used in a long time, so Phil and I parked our RV up a bit of a hill beside the barn. We could hook up to electricity there so our RV wouldn't freeze and the food in our fridge wouldn't spoil, but since we were right next to the driveway up to the main house, we couldn't stay in the RV.

We were put up in style at the mother-in-law house turned guest house.

The guest house overlooks the catfish pond. We didn't get to see any catfish because it's wintertime and they're all on the bottom hibernating or whatever they do, but we were told the catfish are pretty darn big. I guess Willoughby won't be going swimming there in the summertime. She'd get eaten!

Catfish pond:

Phil and I got to earn our keep by helping Dena shore up the old cow barn that we were parked beside. Dena was picking up a couple of goats a few days after we arrived, and we had to make sure they had a nice place waiting for them.

Barn:

It looks a bit rough, but it's structurally sound. We had to build a few walls and put on some tin on the roof, and we helped to put an electric fence around the perimeter. The weather cooperated with us for most of the work with temperatures up into the 50s, so it was nice to be working outside. I couldn't wait to see the goats, and Dena was picking up a second Great Dane that day too, so we were looking forward to meeting him as well. I don't have any pictures of the Dane yet (see above and Phi's poopy computer) but I do have some great shots to share as soon as I can get back to my computer. But here are the goats:

Aren't they cute? They weren't in the best of shape, but Dena's a veterinarian so they're coming around nicely. And the one on the right in the picture may be pregnant! Now those kind of kids I can deal with.

Now I think in a previous post Phil said I would be chasing some chickens while we were here. I can't say I chased any, but I did gather some eggs and get up close to Clyde and the ladies.

The ladies lay some pretty good-tasting eggs, let me tell you.

And we'll have to come back when the weather's nice because there's also a swimming pool and a serenity fountain/waterfall here that I want to see in action. And the previous owner built a playhouse for his grandkids that Dena's going to turn into her vet clinic.

The swimming pool is to the left of the picture, but you can see the serenity pond and the playhouse here. And that archway leads down to where Phil and I were staying.

So we've been having a great time here, working and eating and running around. Phil got to have some fun with a chainsaw, which he always enjoys.

Life down (up) on the farm is very good indeed.

We're going to hit the road before we wear out our welcome. We're leaving here on Monday and are heading to Mississippi for a few days. No one wants to hire us yet, so we're just going to bum around for awhile until something turns up. If anyone knows of anything in a nice, warm climate, let us know and we'll head in that direction.