Battle to Vicksburg

Most Civil War nuts have heard of “The Battle of Vicksburg”, but today it was “Battle to Vicksburg”.  After having a normal drive through the panhandle of Florida, and through Mobile, as we headed up highway 49 to Hattiesburg, well…the skies got dark, and they opened up, and…we have a clean motor home now.   Yep, we drove through that thunder cell covering up Lucedale pictured below.



But the fun had just begun…we got through Hattiesburg just ahead of an approaching storm, and between Hattiesburg and Jackson there is this small town called Magee, and I saw an even worse storm headed there.  I quickly calculated that we could just skirt in front of that storm, and luckily, we did.

About the time we were just north-west of Magee (orange marker above), this series of storms were hitting the highway we past through just 15 minutes ago.  And Jackson, to our north-west, was where we were going to pick up I-20, and it was being slammed too.

By the time we got to Jackson, we had missed the storm there, which also was calming down.  From there west to Vicksburg we did hit some rain, not real hard rain, but had traffic like it was a five mile stretch of Southern California traffic, but with only two lanes.  Wish we had a picture of Skruffy back on the bed watching the front window from 20 feet back all by herself.  That girl hates heavy rains, and hates lightening and thunder even more.

Our goal was to get to Cracker Barrel in Vicksburg for dinner around 6.  At 6:30 we arrived, parked, and as I was unhooking the HHR, a staff member walked up and said, “Sir, I hate to tell you this, but we have not had power for a few hours now…and we are not sure when it will be restored.”  Well, we have a place to park, thanks to Cracker Barrel, but we went to a nearby Deli called Newk's Eatery.

First time we had heard of this place, and they have a lot of them through the south, including as close as Clearwater Florida, just south of where we live.  We both liked it, but there was some fundraiser going on for some dance group, and the young girls did not know how to act around paying patrons.  We both had a cup of soup, and Marcia had a Prime Rib sandwich, and I had a Roast Beef Sandwich.  I did not know that the mustard, a Creole Mustard, would taste like horseradish mustard, but it did…but I fought through it.  Would have been great with a regular spicy brown mustard.

Tomorrow we head to Fort Smith since my friend in the Pine Bluff area had a funeral to attend out of town.  But that will allow us to drive up to just south of Kansas City on Saturday, where we hope to have dinner with my son Ryan, and then see an Aunt and cousins on my mom’s side on Sunday.