After 9 fabulous weeks back in Texas
with family and friends, we have hit the road again. Last year, we
did not visit Mississippi on our journey east so it was the perfect
place to stop for a week. We stayed at LeFleur's Bluff State Park.
It was a nice campground although I cannot claim to have explored it
much due to the very cold weather. One morning, it was 14 degrees
when we got up and there was actually ice on the INSIDE of a couple
of our windows! Fortunately, the shower houses had heaters and the
hot water did not run out. Yay!
We had a great campsite that backed to
the lake and was right across from the showers and laundry (That's us-the big white one.)
The kids thought the cold was great and
it did not stop them from playing outside a little. They had so much
fun collecting ice from all around and then they would stack it under
our RV to hopefully save it from melting and since it did not get
above freezing one day, the ice lasted a while.
We also found this little creek that
had iced over so the kids grabbed some sticks and went ice breaking!
The Mississippi Museum of Natural
Science and the Mississippi Children's Museum were located in the
park and both were perfect for cold days.
The Museum of Natural Science (free
with our museum pass) was small but had enough there to entertain us
for several hours. The kids enjoyed the aquariums and animal
exhibits. I enjoyed seeing the comparisons that showed how large
animals were hundreds of thousands of years ago compared to now.
A really cool thing that we saw was this two-headed snake. Both heads eat and drink but only one of them controls the other functions.
The museum also advertised a “fish
feeding” done by a diver including a talk about the fish, three
days a week so we returned later in the week for that.
Unfortunately, they must have decided not to do it and all we got to
see was this scuba diver scrubbing the tank wall. Ha ha. It was fun
anyway just staring at him and we checked out some of the exhibits again.
And the kids LOVED the children's
museum (50% off with our pass). I don't think they had a single
exhibit that we had seen elsewhere and that was awesome. When I
asked the kids what their favorite part of the museum was, they both
responded, “Everything!”
Jordan thought being able to milk this
cow was fantastic (it was really water). I told her that every time
it mooed, it was because it wanted to be milked. So Jordan was
determined to keep it happy. At one point, both kids were building
this house together but EVERY time the cow mooed she would race over
to milk it. It was quite funny as she never worked on the house more
than a minute without having to stop what she was doing to take care
of the cow!
Jacob really liked this tractor with a
grapple that he could rotate and pick up logs from the forest and
then put in the log chute.
The kids and I also drove to
Mississippi's Petrified Forest, about 25 miles from the park. It was
a 30-45 minute self-guided tour with markers at many of the petrified
logs. The trees once grew up north then followed a prehistoric river
and came to rest in this area. I certainly did not understand the
whole process of petrification but it was a pretty interesting visit.
There was also a little visitor's
center that including a mineral display with some very pretty pieces.
This was my favorite because it reminds me of paisley ;)
And the one last thing we did, was to
go to gymnastics. I found a gym nearby and Jordan went for their
try-out class. She had a great time. There were two instructors and
only two kids! I don't think she has ever had such one-on-one
instruction before and she did a great job.
So we entered Mississippi in the
pouring rain and left in the freezing cold, but we still managed to
have a very nice time. It would be great to be able to come back in
the spring and I bet the park would be gorgeous. But for now, we are
heading to Florida!
