Florida – Day 13

January 8, 2022

It was so cold last night, we woke to 28 degree temperature outside. Thankfully our RV has a great heater and we were nice and warm inside. But when you are out on the road and don’t like the weather you can just pack up and leave it so that’s what we did. We headed out bright and early at 8:30 am and headed toward warmer weather.

We had a long drive today as we head toward home. We have kept most days to 250 miles or less but today we drove 333 miles. We drove across Mississippi crossed the Mississippi River and the drove across Louisiana.

We stopped in Meridian, Mississippi to fill up with gas. We have a 80 gallon tank so if it is really low filing up can take quite a while. Once we got done we headed on to Vicksburg National Military Park.

Vicksburg was a turning point in the Civil War. Here after a 47 day siege from May 18 to Jul 4 1863 General Grant accepted the surrender of the Confederates and took the city. Soldiers from Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania and black soldiers from Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi fought for the Union. Soldiers from Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Maryland, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas fought for the Confederacy. 100,000 troops in total of which 20,000 men would fall as casualties. The battle grounds cover over 1,700 acres. It is impossible to tour and see everything in one day. We spent an hour and a half just touring the Union side of the battle before we had to leave.

As we approached Shreveport, Louisiana we had been battling winds for hours so we pulled over in a rest area near Choudrant, Louisiana for a half hour break. Then back on the road where we hit heavy rains and lots of lightening. Due to accidents and weather we finally got into our campground at 4:30pm, an eight hour day which is much longer than we prefer. We had a small break in the weather so we were able to get the RV hooked up before it started raining again and see the Motercycle gnome at the campground. I made cheese quesadillas for dinner and we both read and relaxed until bedtime.

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