Kenny and I spent the first three weeks of 2017 traveling down the Natchez Trace Parkway from Nashville to Natchez. If you missed week 1, you can catch up here. We left off last week in Tupelo, Mississippi during a winter storm, and now we're settled at the next free campsite on the Trace, Jeff Busby Campground.
Week 2: Camping at Jeff Busby + Goshen Springs
January 11, 2017
Today is our third day at Jeff Busby. We started out at a campsite in the trees.
The next day there were high wind advisories so we moved to a site behind the bathroom building to block the southwesterly winds (Obviously Kenny’s idea). And then there wasn’t any wind. Now we’re the only RV in the joint and feel kinda odd being behind the bathroom, but decided that we don’t want to move again.
We went on a run this morning up a hill — then down. It’s been humid and cloudy with minutes of sunshine, but it’s 70 degrees and only dropping into the 60s overnight. It felt so good to be outside all day and to sleep with the windows open.
During the day everyone leaves, and we hang around. Until the sun gets low in the sky. Then a van might come in. A tent. A 45’ coach. Last night, a half dozen or so rigs came in. The day before: two. Tonight, we have a tent camper and a Roadtrek.
We’re taking off tomorrow to recharge the battery and dump our tanks.
January 12, 2017
It’s 10:16 am, 67 degrees, and 79% humidity. It’s overcast, but the sun keeps popping out. After yesterday’s run, I woke up with tight hamstrings and a stiff right hip. We decided to take the 1ish-mile Little Mountain Trail to the top of the hill - the second highest point on the Natchez Trace at a towering 603 feet. We brought our yoga mats and clumsily stretched on the hillside, and thankfully never rolled. The sun came out and we hiked back down.
Our tent neighbor left early this morning and our RV neighbors are just pulling out. Our plan is to read, eat lunch, and pack up by 1:00 pm to head to Choctaw State Park so we can charge and dump. Everyone else is in such a hurry.
We have the campground to ourselves again. Annie is lying in the grass trying not to fall asleep. Her eyelids slowly closing, her head nodding. Kenny has his Sibley Eastern Birds book and his binoculars out, checking off sightings on the Mississippi bird brochure checklist.
January (Friday the) 13(!), 2017
We never packed up and left yesterday. We decided around 1:00 that we didn’t want to move and just continue reading and basking in the intermittent sun. There actually wasn’t much of a discussion about it. It went something like K: Maybe we should just stick around another day? A: Okay.
Yesterday we created a tentative travel plan. We had the idea to go be beach babes on Padre Island, but it doesn’t make sense now that we will be going to Rice, Texas to get our Casita door replaced. So, we’re thinking we’ll just continue heading west to Arizona, maybe get as far as Joshua Tree, shoot up to Vegas, over to the Grand Canyon and 600 miles back east to Grand Junction.
It’s been nice being disconnected, only a windup radio and phones with a bad signal… so not totally disconnected. It’s made room for more writing, reading, walking, stillness. But, it's hard to not always have something to do or somewhere to be.
Tonight, we hiked up the hill to watch the sunset, leaving behind an empty campground. I tried to figure out how to take sunset pictures on my camera and they turned out orange and not so magical.
Anyways, the sun sets, as it does, and this truck drives up and parks across the lot from us - facing in the opposite direction from the sunset. We decide to head back and Kenny starts walking really fast. A few quick steps down the road and Kenny whisper-yells, “Did you see the hockey mask hanging in that guy’s windshield?”
I asked if he was kidding. We hurried down the road — a steep, steep hill. He started going off to the Little Mountain trailhead, and I wanted to go back down the road. “You think walking back in the woods is a good idea?” Kenny: “Well, he’s in a car!” I kept going down the road with Annie, and Kenny followed. As shadows climbed up the hill, we ran down the mile to our campground as fast as we could. “I think he might be a ranger,” I logically suggested when we got back to camp. We didn’t get killed yet tonight.
January 14, 2016
Always leave early so you have plenty of time to throw away your plan, recalibrate, and get going in the right direction
Kenny wanted to leave Jeff Busby around 1:00 pm. At 11:00-ish, I had already had breakfast, gone on a run, taken a sponge bath, packed up the trailer, and had no desire to sit around until 1:00 watching Kenny sleep with his book in his hands.
After having some trouble getting our broken door latched and locked, we headed to our next stop, Choctaw Lake Recreation Area to dump our tanks and recharge. Only thing is, contrary to what their website says, the campground was gated and not open until spring. A look at the map and we decided to head down the Trace to Goshen Springs, about 30 miles outside of Jackson.
We had a nice drive down. It was about 70 degrees with the sun shining bright. We got out at French Camp to stretch our legs. A rickety old town with reconstructed cabins, a post office, a blacksmith, scattered around the property and loosely connected by a boardwalk. Each structure had a sign that they were made possible by French Camp Academy, a Christian boarding school for at-risk 6-18 year olds. Other than an auto parts store, the academy seemed to be the only thing happening in French Camp.
A little farther down the Trace, we stopped at the Kosciusko Welcome Center where we were greeted by an old woman and an even older woman. The younger decided to take us on a tour of the welcome center and divulge the history of her town. In the corner stood a mannequin in a glass display case that was dressed as Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a Polish military leader who someone named the town after. Only thing is, the person who honored Kosciuszko by naming the town after him, misspelled his name and so the town is Kosciusko with the “z” omitted.
She showed us the paintings made by local artists on the walls and a case of sculptures made from found objects, like nuts and bottle caps. “This is a nice one here. I don’t know much about the artist” she repeated as we made our way around the single room museum.
Back at the entrance near the water cooler, was a metal cart holding coffee, cups, creamer. On it hung a metal cup with a long arm. The older lady picked it up. “We used to drink water from these off the porch.” The other lady said she just had a conversation with her grandson and he was blasphemously calling the tool a ladle. “No, it’s not a ladle. You drink from it, but I can’t remember what’s it’s called". She stammered about it, trying to find the word, and it finally came to the older woman: “A dipper.” (But we were deep in Mississippi so it sounded more like “A dippuh.”
We talked about traveling down the Trace for a minute, and the older woman looked back on when she was a kid and used to walk the Trace with her friends. “It’s a shame,” said the other woman. “Kids these days don’t have those memories. You can’t create those kinds of memories playing video games and watching TV.” We nodded in agreement, but I had a feeling she was talking to me about people my age. They sent us off with some cotton blossoms.
We considered driving into town (Oprah spent her early childhood in Kosciusko and you can get a picture next to the replica of her childhood home!), but it was getting late into the afternoon and we wanted to get settled for the night.
On the other end of a long, winding, narrow bridge, a bridge built so close to the reservoir you feel like you could skim your fingers over the water, is Goshen Springs Campground. We weren’t parked for more than thirty minutes when Kenny noticed the growing pool of oil under the back of the van. Who knows how long we’d had the leak, but the bright grey cement slab we were parked on showed an undeniable problem. Looks like we’ll be here for a few more days. Hoping the fix is under $400.