Current Location: Tom Sawyer Mississippi River RV Park, West Memphis, Arkansas

Today was a free day to sightsee and do whatever. Val started the morning by putting soup in the crockpot for dinner. Since we woke up to some pretty major fog, we decided to stay around inside the trailer for a while. Malcolm crawled up the ladder to put the weather station up on its perch. The wind coming off the river had the wind gauge spinning pretty steadily. The fog eventually started blowing off the river, up the bank and over the campground. It was actually pretty cool looking.

Fog blowing in.

Lone campers in the riverside section.

Eventually, the weather let up some so we hopped in the truck to head to downtown Memphis and walk around. It was raining off and on this morning and the wind was steady but not too bad. The weather forecast was calling for thunderstorms in the afternoon through the night.

We had the GPS take us to Beale Street. One place we wanted to go to was A. Schwabs store. On the way, we drove along a river road next to a park, so we decided to stop there to walk a bit and grab some pictures.

Memphis and I-40 bridge.

On to Beale Street. To be honest, 10:30 on a rainy Saturday winter morning doesn’t seem to be the peak tourist season. We nearly had the whole street to ourselves.

Beale Street

The A. Schwab store was pretty cool, though. We enjoyed looking at all the old items they had on display and picked up a couple souvenirs.

The A. Schwab store on Beale Street.

We walked around downtown a little more and decided it wasn’t worth braving the increasing wind and off-and-on rain, so we got in the truck and decided to find out where the church we are going to tomorrow is located. We found it, then decided to hunt down lunch and ended up at a Firehouse Subs. From there, we went in search of a mall we could walk around inside, though the rain had pretty much let up by then. After walking around the mall for a while, we stopped by a Kroger to get some groceries and headed back to the trailer.

Malcolm found a UK basketball game on and watched until half-time. Since he had a headache, he took some aspirin and laid down in bed, taking a 3 hour nap. While Malcolm napped, Val got several pictures of passing river boats:

Downstream river boat.

Upstream river boat.

We also had a neighbor move in next door. We watched them hook up their utilities but they left their fifth wheel hitched to the truck, so obviously there for an overnight stay. Since the wind was blowing and Malcolm’s headache was running full steam at the time they rolled in, we just watched through the window to make sure they didn’t need any help.

After dinner, Malcolm loaded up the movie Tangled in the BluRay player while Val finished up her shower and we spent the evening relaxing with a movie.

Our storm forecasts keep getting downgraded by the hour. Though it has been windy all afternoon and evening, I believe we may miss nearly all the thunderstorm activity they had been forecasting all day. I hope so. The weather station on the trailer has indicated peak winds of 30 MPH so far and, as I’m writing this at 10:00 PM, the trailer is rocking pretty good. Should make for an interesting night.

Current Location: Tom Sawyer’s Mississippi River RV Park, West Memphis, Arkansas

Miles Traveled: 354

Our first day on the road went off pretty uneventful. After a group of campers at Ft. Toulouse offering their assistance in getting us hooked up (didn’t really need it, but let them “help”, nonetheless), we drove to the dump station and cleaned and emptied the tanks really well. Then it was off and up the road.

Dumping at Ft. Toulouse.

We traveled up I-65 from Montgomery to Birmingham. On the way, we stopped at a Love’s Truck Stop in Clanton to weigh the whole rig, since this is the first time we’ve been on the road with it fully loaded to live in. With a 1/2 tank of fuel, the water and holding tanks empty and Val sitting in the truck (I was standing outside), the total was 22,780 lb. With myself in the truck, we’re right at 23,000 lb., about where I was expecting to be.

Loaded, rolling weight.

We also stopped at Camping World to look for a couple of items we didn’t want to have to wait on ordering – an outside rug and a new Woodalls campground book. We also signed up for a Passport America card. Also, they were running a special that I could add a year onto my Good Sam membership for $20 and get a free night camping (up to $25). I’ve already got a copy of today’s receipt in an envelope with the coupon to send off in the mail (they reimburse you).

We stopped at another Love’s Truck Stop to eat lunch at McDonalds since we hadn’t really organized anything to eat along the way. We’ll start doing that more to save a few bucks.

The truck ran fine and pulled all the hills it was asked to pull, if not a little slower than the rest of the traffic. Still averaging about 9.3 – 9.4 mpg.

We ended up at Tom Sawyer Mississippi River RV Park, right on the river in West Memphis, Arkansas. We’ll be here two nights. We plan on attending church in Memphis on Sunday morning at Independent Presbyterian Church, where the pastor from our current church in Alabama came from. We’ll pack up and move on after lunch. Until then, we plan on taking our extra day tomorrow and do some sight-seeing in Memphis.

I’ll close with a picture of our site as we arrived. The Mississippi River is in the background.

Camped along the Mississippi.