79:Mississippi:Looping down to New Orleans
After a night in a carpark in some nameless town I was desperate to check my bank balance after constantly forgetting the previous day and my funds were in dire need of a top up. I was now driving west again in the big S loop down to Louisiana and the Big Easy, New Orleans. The roads were pretty much the standard I was now used to, long, flat and boring. All the junctions had the same set of chains for gas, food and lodgings. The interstates were convenient for getting around the country quickly but hardly a tourists dream journey. For most of the day the most exciting thing I saw was a dead mountain lion on the side of the side of the road. What a treat it would be to see a live one but I would guess roadkill would be the closest I would get this trip.
My minivan was now pushing 7,00 miles driven on this trip and I was also approaching the magic 100,000 miles on the thing in total. I was thinking it was maybe time for a service if I was expecting it to take me the next 20,000 miles I was guessing I would do on the way to Costa Rica. I was still in Alabama and then came back into Mississippi and since I was on the Interstate was treated to a rare free (and completely legal) wifi connection at the ‘welcome to Mississippi’ rest stop. All the main hotel chains have open connections, although most require you to click a waiver that says you are a guest and won’t be doing anything illegal on the connection. Well, all I was doing was surfing, sending mail and uploading a few photos but I was very rarely a guest in a posh hotel. I wondered if this ploy was going to get me in trouble any time.
Despite singing the Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra classic ‘Jackson’ most of the way down the Interstate I managed to drive right through the place without noticing. I would usually put the next stop into the GPS when I got close to my next stop instead of getting directed to the usually random street I would put in and I hadn’t realized I was so close. I was on an S day so stopped at the next starbucks for a coffee and quite proper cookie to ponder my next move. No free wifi here. The Starbucks chain has a deal going with T-Mobile but the places are so few and far between it never seemed worth it to sign up. Free always beats $30 a month. I hoped. It was late afternoon and I could go back to Jackson and a nearly closed city or keep going to the next state park I reasoned I could make before dark. I wanted to spend the weekend in New Orleans so I chose to keep going and only a few miles down the high found to my delight that the road I was aiming for turned out to be a ‘parkway’. No heavy traffic, just a 1 lane highway for 100 miles through a beautiful forested park. There weren’t even any houses to spoil it and very few cars coming the other way. I saw a girl meditating in a field before the setting sun and just enjoyed the cruise south with few other distractions. Much better than stinky Jackson! 