We pulled onto I-40 just a few miles from our campground in Brinkley, Arkansas. Here in central Arkansas, we saw long lines of 18-wheelers, with very few automobiles on the road. It looks like people are really sheltering in place in Arkansas! We couldn't help but notice one 18-wheeler had written in the dirt on the back side of his truck "Trump Train 2020."
Besides trucks, we are also seeing that spring is popping out in the form of red-bud trees showing off their pink blooms among the bare trees along the interstate. In the midst of a pandemic, God is still in control of bringing new life to our world!
We know that this section of the state has gotten lots of rain. The waters of the Mississippi River are covering green spaces that are usually dry.
Traffic slowed down to a crawl as we approached the long bridge that would take us over the Mississippi River. This bridge also takes us into Memphis, where we are now seeing more automobiles on the highway.
As we cross the swollen river, we realize that this is the first time we have been east of the Mississippi in a while.
Crossing the river also means that we are crossing into a different state. We were welcomed to Tennessee--"the volunteer state" on the east side of the bridge.
Our route today takes us around Memphis. Denisa is certainly glad that Mark does his homework each evening before he takes the wheel. He already knew about this very short overpass, so we were prepared and knew that we would fit underneath. A short overpass is the kind of stuff that RVer nightmares are made of.
We curved through the southwest corner of Tennessee, and were soon welcomed into Mississippi. According to their sign, this is the birthplace of America's Music. Normally we would be excited to check that out. But we're assuming that the music venues are closed even in the birthplace's state.
Denisa is snapping a lot of pictures during the three-hour drive today. But the one below might be her favorites. At $1.89 per gallon, this is the cheapest diesel we have ever purchased in the 5 and half years we've been traveling full-time.
We wish our 100-gallon fuel tank was emptier when we filled up today! We got just over 40 gallons of diesel for $76.52. That's a record for us!
We've been in three different states in a three-hour drive and that was a long travel day for us. At the end of the drive, we arrived at Cross City Campground near Corinth, Mississippi. Under more normal circumstances, this is a great place to stop to soak up some Civil War history. But the museum in town is closed, and several other places were off limits because of crowds. But we did find that Corinth Contraband Camp was open for a walk this afternoon.
This is part of the Shiloh National Military Park, and it highlights the camp where many just-freed slaves gathered after the Civil War. Here they learned how to farm and raise crops for themselves, on their way to a whole new life. Today, we were the only ones walking the cement path that connected the life-sized sculptures and sign posts.
After seeing the large tree trunks snapped in half and branches stripped from trunks, we recognized that a storm had passed through Corinth, Mississippi lately. We found a news article that reported that high winds in October had left this damage.
In order to social-distance, we're now looking for out-of-the-way open-air places to get some exercise. We walked the trails in the Corinth City Park, then we drove to the nearby town of Farmington. This serpentine track curved its way through the trees to give us another one-mile loop on this beautiful day.
In case we should get tired at the city park, we found 22 of these very comfortable swinging benches. The whole town of Farmington could come to sit and swing at once.
We would have liked to stay longer in this area. From what we could tell from driving through town, its a lovely place with some interesting history. When we were here, no cases of Covid-19 had been detected in this or the surrounding counties. We are being careful to distance ourselves and we are washing our hands like lives depended on it. We aren't wandering right now, as we are zooming across three states in three hours towards our next appointment.
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