 MONDAY |
TRAVEL DAY |
 |
After a fairly long travel day we arrived in the Delta National Forest in Mississippi. Just after we turned off the paved roadway Tricia asked me to pull over. She wanted to turn off the roof fans and close the vents before we started kicking up dust of the gravel roads in the forest.
She did that, but then I saw she had a pair of scissors in her hand and wondered what she was up to. I caught sight of her in the truck mirror stealing a cotton ball from the field next to the road. If you look real close you'll see the orange handled scissors hidden in her right hand in the photo below.
After we turned off of MS-16 and onto FSR-703 things got a little bumpy. There were numerous pot holes in the rod but we were able to dodge most of them if we kept an eye out. It helped that we were only traveling a short distance and stayed below 25MPH.
Everything was going fine until we turned onto an unnamed road that led to our reserved campsite. Think of it as a three mile long driveway with nowhere to turn around. The first mile wasn't too bad, a few unavoidable pot holes were found in the gravel road, but along the second mile things got worse.
We spent the next mile stopping and checking out on foot the mud filled potholes that stretched across the road. It was at the first mudhole we should have thrown in the towel and found somewhere else to camp for the night. But we have 4-wheel drive and it wasn't that bad! So we pushed forward.
The third and final mile was the worst. I couldn't turn around, and I couldn't push the trailer through the mudholes that I was barely was able to pull it through. No choice, we had to go forward. When we arrived at the end of the road, the location of our campsite, I must admit it was a nice setting. Heck we were three miles away from the nearest thru-road and it was extremely quiet except for the sound of nature.
There was parking for hiking trail across from our campsite and I got to thinking, "If it rains even slightly and a couple other vehicles come down this road and deepen those mudholes even slightly, it may make it impossible for us to get back out of here on Thursday morning. (By the way there was rain forecast for Wednesday and Thursday. -T)
After 15 minutes of calming our nerves the decision as made to not spend even one night in this remote campsite and instead go back to the main road where we saw a campsite right on the edge of the roadway.
It wasn't quite as scary getting back out (only since we'd already made it through once. -T), but every bit as dangerous with a canal that runs along the north side of the muddy three mile long driveway. (And as people before us kept trying to go around the mud, we were left with one tire at the edge of the road and the other tire up to a foot deep in mud. It was just lovely! -T)
We didn't take the time to photgraph our ordeal, but we did snap these photos after we got setup in our "Plan B" campsite. (And an ordeal it was, seeing the trailer rocking one way then the other, knee deep in mud, inches from a tree fallen over the road and only cut back to allow 9 feet of clear road. And we are 8 1/2 feet wide, eek! At least one of those mudpits was more like a mud sinkhole . . . go through the road in the wrong spot and you and your vehicle disappears forever!! - T)
The next morning with no cell phone signal and no idea where we were going to go we both agreed we had seen enough of the Delta National Forest and left it in the rearview mirror.
Would you like to be notified of new blog posts?
 |
We encourage everyone |
Until next time
