We have been out of touch with our internet persona for over a week now.
We did keep busy, however. We built a Christmas display for the front of the coach and did lots of exploring in Mississippi.

I am calling this Random Access Memory because I have lots of disconnected thoughts to talk about.

Katrina and Rita:

The local television station programming is full of Katrina recovery storys. The federal aid that is paying for motel and hotel bills may run out just about Christmas time, so there is a lot of pressure for Congress to extend the aid. Batton Rouge recently passed an ordinance that allows their citizens to host a displaced family by placing one FEMA RV trailer on each of their lots. Yet another story talked about jobs that cannot be filled in the same community. One thought was that the unemployment and Federal aid are just too lucrative.

We have been observing damage from Katrina even up around Interstate 20, half way up Mississippi. We drove along a wonderful stretch of the Natches Trace. This is a beautiful parkway reminiscent of Shanandoah National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia. There are still blown down trees everywhere along the route. Some are just chainsawed in two and rotated out of the way. We are camped tonight in South Toledo Bend State Park on the Lousiana-Texas border. The local park staff was describing the damage from Rita to this park. Over 300 trees blown down. All they are allowed to do is push them back in the forest to rot. They had 90 mph winds for a full day here. The eye passed just west of here around Beaumont Texas. We are a hundred miles from the coast here. We were seeing Katrina damage 200 miles from the coast. Evidently Mississippi is allowing the loggers to harvest the downed trees in that state.

Campgrounds:

Occasionally we notice a slight difference in the quality of the campgrounds we stay in. For example, last night we needed a spot to stay around Alexandria Lousiana. We looked in our trusty campground guide, and picked out a campground. We called ahead because we are finding many FEMA RV’s parked in campgrounds close to urban centers. The host assured us he would have plenty of room. We arrived in the twilight at 4:45 pm and couldn’t find the host anywhere. I called his phone and left a message, walked to his door and knocked, then walked all over his park. The stalls were lined up alongside the fence of the sewage plant, but also this was the back side of a Coleseum/fair grounds complex. I found a hot pole out in the middle of the back parking lot and plugged in. The host tapped on the door a couple hours later and apologized for forgetting about us, and said we were O.K. where we were. The next morning while I was doing the pre-flight on the coach I noticed a young gentleman in a shiny new black pickup with very dark glass sitting off to the side of the parking lot. I then observed a car approace, pull alongside, driver door to driver door, and some transaction took place over the next 30 seconds and the car drove away. I buttoned everything up and we were out-of-there. Contrast that with the campground we are in now. This is a new Lousiana State Park. It is carefully carved out of a beautiful pine forest alongside the man-made Toledo Bend Reservoir, The roads are paved, the sites are level and easily accessed even with big rigs. They have a wonderful visitor center with lots of natural history displays. Computers showing local birds that sing when you touch the screen. Boxes to place your hands inside and feel things like antlers and tortoise shells. Quizzes to take like which animal uses its tail as a parachute. (hint it chatters like a squirl) I guess the secret is arrive early so you can divert to a Wal-Mart or something else if you don’t like your first choice.

Slaves and Free:

We keep getting these incredible history lessons. I always thought there was slavery, then the Civil War happened and then there were freed but repressed slaves and finally the civil rights movement. In Nachez we found a museum in the home of William Johnson. William and his family were “free blacks” in the quarter century before the Civil War. William was a barber, a land owner and even a slave owner. One of about 200 similar people in this community. William’s contribution to history was 16 years worth of details about anti-bellum society in the South through his diarys. Make no mistake over two thirds of the population of Mississippi were slaves and it was the slave labor that made the South so bountiful before the industrial revolution reduced the need for meanial labor. It is just a facet of life in the south that I had never glimpsed.

I guess that is random enough. Time to send this along. We hope everyone is enjoying a festive holiday season. Here is a link that my son, Glen, contributed to the cause. It shows a satilite photo and indicates exactly where we are camped. Click on it, or copy it and paste it into your browser and see where we are. Google Maps.

Gary and Judy Dinsmore