Day Three: Natchez Trace Parkway, Sardis Dam

Tally: Days- 1.5, Girls-1.5

I know the tally above looks odd, and I’ll admit that today was off to a roaring good start at beating us into a flat quivering mass of girl colored goo, but late in the day a couple of things went right (in between moments of “Seriously, WTF already?”) so I decided that today was a draw... but since I don’t like math that doesn’t add up, I split the win instead of confusing myself or my readers later on with bad math. 

First of, let me say that Google Maps had an epic fail day, not once, but TWICE. 

Epic Fail Number One: we are headed from Gadsden, AL to Sardis, MS. 

1. Google Maps are programmed with a destination 
2. Mute is NOT on 
3. Volume is turned up
4. Google has been giving directions within this program
5. I currently have two bars of LTE Verizon signal

Google Maps, somewhere around Muscle Schoals, AL-has stopped directing- and I happen to notice about fifteen miles into it that she hasn’t said anything in awhile. 

I look down at my phone and there’s no blue line to be seen. 

Now, if you ever use Google Maps, you know that if you stray from course, the program will reroute you immediately. I re-centered my map and I still had a blue line but I was not being recalculated. I have no earthly idea why. 

I exited the program and re-started it and was able to get back on course but I still don’t understand what happened. 

Epic Fail Number Two (same day): Detours... they happen to every one and we all know that summer is construction season. 

Google sent us down a country road in MS that said the road was “Closed in _ Miles”. No number of miles was listed on the sign. 

Whenever crews close a road they offer a detour, so we weren’t worried, but we were relieved when we saw a construction sign, a road patch and and end of construction sign. We were certain that they had finished up early for Mother’s Day weekend and we were in the clear. 

Imagine our surprise when we saw a close road, cold equipment and no way through- with no detour- twenty miles down the road with no cell service. 

We were forced to turn around and Google couldn’t re-route us. 

Fortunately, our map was still up on the phone, and we were able to backtrack about two miles to a small road, follow it north a few miles, then east on a dirt road about three miles, then south about four miles with our fingers crossed that it would come out somewhere behind the construction crew and where do you think we pulled out?

 Not fifty feet behind the crew! HaHa!! No detour, my patootie!!

Best of all, we saw the most spectacular field of wildflowers on one of the tiny roads that we never would have seen had we not gotten creative.  🌹

Even though Google failed us most of the day, we scored a couple of big wins on the Natchez Trace Parkway this afternoon after a brief heartbreak that was quickly mended. 

We followed the Trace for a few hours, certainly not the entire length, which I would like to do one day, but I couldn’t find the passport stamps anywhere and when we arrived at the visitors center at 4:03, we found out that the have all of the stamps and they close at 4pm. 

Two other girls were there as well, for the same reason. I did find a geocache and I decided to do the cache so the trip wouldn’t be a complete bust. Katrina and I sat on the bench and talked a little bit and we’re just about to get up to leave when the ranger came out with an ink pads and ALL the trace stamps!  They all had tomorrow’s date but I didn’t care! I was able to do the ones that I had and it totally made my day. 

It made me happy enough to deal with the hummus that leaked in the cooler and ruined all of our ice for drinking and also made the inside of my cooler smell and feel like a cheap, Greek discotheque. 

On the upside, Katrina made chips and guacamole again for dinner, and I bought extra avocados so we don’t have to stop again tomorrow 😋

Also a win for tonight, we had planned on staying at a state park here in Sardis that would have cost around $14 per night with my discount. We accidentally turned into the wrong campground and ended up staying at the Army Corps of Engineers Campground called Oak Grove (no clue why it’s called that- every tree in this place is a Loblolly Pine 🙃). Each site has water and electric for our fans and phones, a concrete picnic table and benches, a fire ring, barbecue grille with tall concrete bbq table and a lantern hook. With my National Park access pass we paid $9 to stay here tonight. 

$9 also gets us free use of the boat ramps at the dam (upper and Lower lakes), swim beaches and shower house (which we used more than our fair share of hot H2O). 

We sat in our free beach chairs on our paved pad, ate chips and guacamole, played with out cat and dog and had a grand old time. 

Not it’s bedtime and I’m being lulled to bed by the sound of my fans. 

Tomorrow, we hope to make it to Hot Springs, AR. 

We only seem to go there in the summertime. 

I’d love to go when we’d really enjoy hot water. 🙃