We are spending one week in Louisiana and although it’s been quite the experience, in all honesty, we are super excited to leave on Sunday and finally arrive in Texas!  Yee Haw!!  But, before I get ahead of myself.  Let me tell you a bit about this area.

We are staying in Lake Bruin State Park which is in Louisiana, smack dab  between Lake Bruin and the Mississippi River.  Since we are right near the border of two states, we’ve spent time in both this week.  We were surprised and blessed that it cooled down significantly the very week that we are staying here else I fear the bugs would have been unbearable.  Other than rain the first two days, the weather has been delightful with daytime highs in the 70’s and although there have been more bugs than we have seen anywhere yet, they only come out at night.  We cannot use our outdoor led awning lights here, that’s for sure!  Put it this way, Robby (my oldest) sent me an Amazon gift card for Mother’s Day (Thank you, Robby & Marthann!!!)  and I used part of it to get a table top bug zapper!  We heard it frying buggies all night last night, which was quite entertaining in itself.  LOL

Instead of being directly off the lake this time, we decided to pick a more private site on the other side of the campground because it appeared that this area would give us better T-Mobile coverage (according to T-Mobile’s coverage map).  Well, it turns out that we have ZERO T-Mobile coverage anywhere within miles of this park (like, as in 20 miles!)  We have had to learn the hard way that we cannot rely on T-Mobile’s coverage map.  ? Thankfully, we have the Verizon Mifi with an excellent Verizon signal, so Greg can use that to work.  After being here for several hours we unexpectedly discovered that the campground has it’s own wifi.  It was so remote and so few state parks have wifi that I “assumed” they didn’t have wifi and never even checked!  Never assume!  (All of my kiddos have been taught what happens when you assume.)  It turns out that they do indeed have wifi and although it is too slow for Netflix or streaming, it’s perfect for all the basic stuff like emails, Facebook, and for wifi calling.  I have even been able to FaceTime my adorable granddaughters in NC on the campground’s wifi. BONUS!  Much to our surprise, we are still well connected even way out here in the boonies. (Put it this way, the closest Wal-Mart is an hour away.)  Speaking of the boonies…  Here is our campsite:

This park has a small water play area as well as a swimming hole. You will not BELIEVE our story about the swimming hole…

Here are some pictures from around St. Joseph, Louisiana,  which is the town where the state park is located.

We decided to visit the town of Natchez, MS which was an hour away from our campground, for two reasons.  First of all, so we could check out the Indian Village and historical sights and so we could take another drive over yet another large bridge on the Mississippi River.  Secondly, to do some grocery shopping.  Especially since that was the where the closest Wal-Mart Supercenter was located and there were no other large grocery stores closer to speak of.  We left Greg at home to work while Elijah, Saylor and I left to explore.  We left at 11am and didn’t end up getting back home until just after 9pm!  Talk about a loooonnnngggg day.  We went to Grand Village of the Natchez Indians as well as Emerald Mound! It was a very pretty area, although still very rural.  Here are some pictures from that day trip:

As you can see, we have enjoyed this area very much.  The people around here have been the friendliest yet.  Everywhere we go people wave and say “Hi” as if they’ve known you for years.  The first part of the week I was feeling a bit lonely, having had no females to talk to (not face to face anyway) in quite a while.  I was just feeling in general a bit sad that this was going to be a lonelier lifestyle than I had anticipated.  I hadn’t even come across hardly any people to even witness to, much less befriend.  I prayed about it and God sent people from all sides!  I’ve literally met at least one new person (that I’ve actually had long conversations with) every day since!  God is so good.  He always hears and answers our prayers.

We are all settling into a new routine with Saylor (our granddaughter) being added to the mix and she seems to really, REALLY enjoy this lifestyle.  She has been about as good as a five year old can possibly be and for that we are very thankful.  That said, she is about as active as they come and simply requires so much more energy than I typically possess.  This week I started her having a one hour quiet time every day, and as of last night we moved her bedtime up to 8pm.  Both of these help me to have some time to not be “on call” and the earlier bedtime is helping her to be even more well-behaved and less whiney.  Kiddos are always better when well rested!  We were keeping her up later thinking that she’d sleep in, but she wakes up at the same time every day anyway.  So we changed our tactics which we can already tell was a smart move.  That said, she is very good in the mornings and rarely wakes us up.  She just plays quietly in her loft until we come out.  Since we are NOT morning people, this is awesome.  God is working out all the details.  He is good and He will provide.  One day at a time.

We are excited to be off to Texas tomorrow.  We are going to be staying in our first Corps of Engineers campground, so be looking for another entry in a week or so to learn about that.  I always love comments, so leave me one if you’d like.

Happy Trails and Sunny Sails.

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