We really enjoyed this state park in Mississippi! On the 23rd we did an almost 4-mile trail walk which included turtle and alligator sightings, as well as using our binoculars to observe the birds in the bayou. There were also some CCC Dining hall ruins, which was the boys’ first introduction to the Civilian Conservtion Corps. After a little history lesson we found a couple cut logs on the trail and we decided to roll them out for our campfire, which the boys thought was a lot of fun!
Wait, didn’t I say we saw alligators? Yes, we saw several along our walk! So I thought it would be fun for a little game of “spot the gator!” Scroll down to the next picture, and see if you can find the gator, then scroll to the close-up photo to check your answer.
While we live in Florida and there are alligators, we just don’t see them very often where we’re at, so it was pretty exciting to us to see them just off the side of the road. We became very aware of how still and tricky they can be, and spotting them quickly became more important as we knew we would be spending more time in wilder places. Luckily these were rather small, so they weren’t as threatening and scary as their elders could be!
Having rolled our logs through the wood (and then picked them up with the car) we thought it would be fun to do a nice campfire. We got the fire started, and got our hotdogs, beans, marshmallows, and all the fixins ready. In order to see what we were doing we got out our little lantern and put it on the table by all of our food. And then they came. Without warning our little campsite was swarmed with winged termites! It was crazy! The boys tried moving our light to the other end of the picnic table, which helped draw them away from our food. We did manage to work around them, but it put a bit of a damper on our little party. When we turned the light off they started dive-bombing into the fire until we put it out for the night.
The next morning they were gone, and we again enjoyed the park and took a long walk. This time we also went through an adjoining neighborhood, and I found a small folding table that someone was getting rid of so it went back with us (it works great and I’m still using it!).
Our second night was the same–more termites swarming near our table and fire-pit, but at least we knew not to try to have dinner there! We did watch a movie outside at our camper; it was apparently far enough away that they didn’t come over to the tv light.
Again, the next morning they were gone, so packing up was no trouble. We unhooked our utilities and decided we should dump our tanks before heading out. The dump station was just a short distance from our site, but since the road was one-way I thought I should go all the way around instead of just backing up to it. So we circled around the campground loop, at one point having to stop and ease around a truck that someone had left in the road while they were hooking up their camper. When we got to the dump station we started our regular routine of getting out our hoses, etc., when a man on a golf cart came over and yelled, “Hey!” He got our attention and said, “are you one of my campers?” Thinking he was concerned we didn’t have the right to dump at the station I said, “we just pulled out of that space right there!” and pointed to our now-empty site. I was gearing up for a fight about using the dump station, and it turned out he was more concerned about our speed going through the campground. Of course he made it sound like we were tearing through at a dangerous pace, when in reality it wasn’t more than 10mph (maybe 15 when I was past all the sites an circling back to the station?). Assuring him I would make sure to stay at 5mph on my next loop through, we were able to finish our business.