Concluding Mississippi Chapter

Round trip for $3

Monday 12/21/2009 – Woke up late this morning to the view of the sun rays coming through the sky light in the bedroom. It is going to be another beautiful day I thought to myself.
We planned to go to Shepherd State park, a few miles away from the campground. We ate a fast breakfast (cereal) and got ready to go. Hmmm… if breakfast is a fast break, is it redundant to say fast breakfast?  Just thinking.

Flashback

Yesterday night while I was searching the internet I came by a nice blog of Nick and Terry – Full Timers for many years, and read a nice article Nick wrote about Geocaching. I showed it to Patti and we thought it could be a great thing to do while we are hiking or biking. So we went to the goecaching website, found a cache in the state park we were planning to go, and I entered it as a WayPoint in my Lowrance H2Oc handheld GPS.

Back on track

Loaded the bikes on the truck, got my camera, GPS and hat – all ready to go! Jumped in the truck and drove to the park. After 7 miles and 10 minutes our TomTom announced happily “You have reached your destination”. The park ranger comes out from the entrance booth and says – “it is $3 to come in…” I look at Patti – she looks at me – no wallet. We have 2 quarters and few pennies in the organizer. That’s it.
“Sorry”, I tell the lady – “we did not bring our wallet, we didn’t think…” giving her my best look of  ‘please let me in’.
“Sorry – can’t help you”. She says. Oh well – driving back to the camp and getting the wallet, to pay the $3 entrance fee. The fuel cost more! for crying out loud.

Found a treasure

We entered the park, found a parking lot close to many of the trails, and started riding the bike. I turned on my GPS and remembered I have a Way Point marked, but what I did not have is a topographic detail map of this area, so I had no idea which trail would lead to the cache. All the GPS showed is a pink line of our movement on empty green background.
We rode down one trail, and it did not get us closer to our target. Rode back and took another trail. Turned back and turned in, and around and about. At one point we were on a trail that actually got us closer and closer to the glowing mark on my GPS. We started to get excited, our heart started racing, our breathing got faster and we started drooling… OK, not exactly… but we were curious and anxious to find it. When we got to the closest point on the trail, we left our bikes and started walking in, zooming in with the GPS and wandering back and forth. “It is this way” Patti said, “nope, it is the other way”, we zigzagged and went in circles but we zeroed in. “Here it is” Patti said. Hey – we got our first geocaching task accomplished, and it was pretty cool! We liked it and we think we are going to do it more. Thanks Nick for the idea.
Now we did not have any specific direction to follow and this was the only cache in the park. We wandered around in the narrow trails that were still muddy from the rain last week. We crossed some streams and explored the beauty around us. At one point I got a phone call from my son, in CA, and tried to ride and talk at the same time, but it did not work that well.  After the phone-break we rode a little more and navigated back to the truck heading back to the trailer.

Quadruple C for Dinner

When we arrived back to our RV the bikes were filthy and full of mud. I connected a spray nozzle to a garden hose and washed the bikes. While I washed the bikes I could smell the great scent of the amazing dish Patti cooked yesterday. I was lucky enough to have some leftovers from this dish – I love this type of food. It is called Creamy Coconut Curry Chicken or in short – CCCC. No idea how to make it (this is Patti’s part) but I can tell you it has a heavenly taste to it. What else can I say? I will ask Patti to publish the recipe.
To put a sweet ending to a sweet day, Patti has decided to bake brownies, and I had couple pieces with hot chocolate. Trying to keep up the holiday spirit.

Short Term Plans

Tomorrow morning we are moving on to our next stop, Louisiana, New Orleans to be exact, St. Bernard State Park to be more accurate. From reading reviews we are a little worried about the crime in this area, but we  hope to find lot’s of fun in this unique city. Patti is very eager to visit the French quarter and explore the different cuisines.