Into the South

We check out of the Hot Springs National Park in the morning after drying out some more of our stuff with the heater in our hotel room. Hot Springs National Park is a collection of Bath Houses along a street in a town in western Arkansas. I think there are 10 buildings, and the NPS has restored one of them to what it was like in the early 20th century when bathing was at its peak. People like Al Capone went to this bath house where men's and women's bathing was separate. The bath house had separate bathing stalls for everyone, a gym, changing rooms that included a vanity and a bed for resting, and separate deck spaces for men and women to enjoy the sun. At that time people went to bath houses to cure their physical ailments.

From there we went to Beale St. in Memphis, Tennessee and had a drink at a bar there. The bartender told us about Marie Leveau the Voodoo Queen and how we should go see her grave in New Orleans. He'd lived there when he was going to school. He also told us to check out these French doughnuts at Cafe du Monde in Jackson Square.

When we checked the weather we found that it was going to rain again and having almost no money, we couldn't get another hotel room. So we slept in the car in the parking lot of a State park while, as fate would have it, no rain poured down that night.

It did start pouring at about 8 in the morning though, so it's good we didn't set up the tent because everything would have been soaked in trying to get it to the car. From there in Northern Mississippi we travel south to Jackson and then take the Natchez Trace all the way to Natchez. On the way I finally get my Sausage McMuffin and it doesn't taste nearly as good in reality as it did in my head. The Natchez Trace is a very old trail that goes from Natchez (on the Mississippi in the South) to Kentucky in the North. Originally it was a native american trail used for herding bison, then when white people colonized the area and started growing crops, they would sail to Natchez with their goods, sell them and set off back home on the Trace. Once steamboats started going up the Mississippi people stopped using the Trace, but it was turned into a National Scenic Highway and there are plenty of interesting stops along the way. We stop at a waterfall, an old inn and plantation and a trail that goes through an old part of the trace (you can see how travelers wore it down into a small canyon, almost like an empty creek bed but about 3 times as deep).

That night we stop at the Tickfaw State Park in Arkansas where I'm feeling really bad and Alex is feeling okay and it rains so hard it soaks through all our bedding in 3 hours. During the first hour I can feel it on the edge of my sleeping bag. During the next hour I have to move off half the bag because it's soaked. The next hour I feel everything wet at my feet, puddles of water were accumulating. Then by the end of the fourth hour everything was wet again except a little high spot on Alex's side. I sit up and say, "why is your side always dry and mine is always soaked? It's not fair! I hate this fucking rain and this swamp!" Alex tells me to sleep where he's sleeping and takes my side of the tent. I say no at first but I'm feeling too bad to sleep in the wetness all night. Even sleeping there, my feet were wet all night and I had only a wet blanket to cover me. The next day I'm a bit delirious from not sleeping and from being sick and cold. I'm not making much sense and all my efforts to help just annoy Alex. We get all our stuff dry in the laundromat at the state park after I have to drive 10 miles to get change from a gas station for the laundry machines.