Hi y'all campers!

I think it was Meriwether Lewis, or maybe Charles Darwin who wrote in his journal “It is a remarkable and hideous fact of nature that regardless of the starting quantity of the three essential building blocks, the marshmallows and graham crackers always remain in abundant supply while the chocolate bars are exhausted”. In only three days on the road, we are becoming alarmingly low on essential provisions. Oh... we have plenty of frozen vegetables, many cans of black beans, several unopened containers of yogurt and boxes of bran cereal to mix with them... but we are down to our last full sized Hershey milk chocolate bar. I'm sure the remedy to that issue will feature in tomorrow's blog.

Anyway, enough about our troubles. Let's talk about travel by Airstream! Today we covered 270 miles from Auburn, AL to Fulton, MS.

Today's route in Google Maps 

It seemed like today was one reminder after another of the Civil Rights movement and college football. A short while after leaving Auburn we were at the exit from I-85 for Tuskeegee, AL. Wow. As a pilot I looked at the sky and though about what was accomplished there. Shortly after that, we were in Montgomery. Rosa Parks' territory. A bit later we passed Selma. It;s remarkable how much 20th Century American history occurred in that corridor of Central Alabama!

Our lunch stop today was Tuskaloosa. Home of 15 time national college football champs the University of Alabama Crimson Tide. And there is no shortage of signage in the greater Tuskaloosa area to make sure no visitor leaves uninformed of that fact. Having left Alabama's other college football town -- Auburn -- a few hours earlier we were hoping that we had not been followed or noticed. I can only imagine how a Swiss tourist feels traveling between Israel and Iran. "Just passin' through... don't notice me... if push comes to shove I'm sure I'll be rooting for your side!" Lunch was good. What else... barbeque. Mrs. Cliche' picked the place after sorting through lots of input offered by TripAdvisor.  Jim 'N Nick's, just off University Blvd (did I mention there is a college there... and they play football?). Pretty solid fare. Sadly, on Sunday no shops were open so we had lunch in the very hot trailer (it was 93 in Tuscaloosa at that hour) and continued west.

Now we're safely across the border in Mississippi.

Fantastic campsite and camping area here in Fulton, MS (I never heard of it, either). This is a US Army Corps of Engineers site. Why does the COE sell camping spaces, you ask? Because they are responsible for navigable waterways throughout the US and even though we are 298 miles from Mobile, AL, it is possible to sail to here from there even with a 600 foot long set of barges (as long as they are less than 9 feet deep). Here's what it looks like from the window of the Airstream where we are parked for the night:

That's a marina in the background and some of the boats in there are 60 feet or more. If one were to sail north from here on the Tennessee Tombigbee waterway (which is the water in the pic above) you would reach the Tennessee River and could continue on to Huntsville and Chattanooga. Who knew? 

Anyhow, here's the rig viewed from the front with the water behind:

And I couldn't resist a panorama of the Tennessee Tombigbee:

(The left side of that pic is facing due south and the right side due north)

Okie dokie... that's it for tonight. Tomorrow we stay put here in MS and take a breather. On Tuesday its on through Memphis to Arkansas!