Mississippi Found

We arrived and Bobbie Gentry got it right when she wrote about “the muddy waters off the Tallahatchie Bridge”, but not just the Tallahatchie River--every river and body of water seems to be muddy. Despite that, (though I don’t know where the drinking water comes from and that bothers me) Mississippi is a beautiful state. It is green, lush and floral with pretty blue skies.

Y’all knew it was hot and humid, so I won’t reiterate that, what’s 95° here is at least 105° everywhere else.

Friendly? Hospitable? Y’all can’t imagine. As we were packing up our motorcycle Monday morning to drive the final 188 miles to Jackson from Southaven, Mississippi, a nice man started talking to us. He was interested in watching us get “all those bags on the bike.” When he found out we were from Seattle he got this funny smile on his face, then asked more questions and finally said, “Well, it shore is differnt here than in Seattle.” He introduced himself as Skeeter Miller from Wiggins, Mississippi down near Gulf Port. When we got on the bike he was returning to the motel and hollered out, “If you have any problems on your way down I-55 I’ll be coming behind you shortly.” Turns out he came behind us and soon passed us by, but waved as he zoomed away. That was our first introduction to the friendly people of Mississippi. Since then we haven’t really met anyone without at least a 3 minute chat, but often the chats are up to 10 minutes. This applies from motel clerks to passersby to assistant manager of the bank and more.

Some quick observations about Mississippi...
After driving through the Bible belt with a church on every corner and a religious billboard between the corners, Mississippi has fewer religious billboards. They still have lots of churches, though they aren’t so obvious.
The plains from South Dakota through Iowa the parts of Illinois, Missouri and Tennessee that we saw along I-55 were devoid of evergreen trees, but once we got into Mississippi about 40 miles we began seeing pines and other evergreens.
Mississippi has more hills than we expected (though they aren’t very high).
We ate at a Chinese Buffet and Grill which had both Chinese and Japanese food as well as salads. They served sushi with cream cheese and imitation crab filling and another variety with either cheese whiz or velveta (I couldn’t tell which).
Jackson seems to be growing by leaps and bounds--or at least the Jackson area. The next census will tell the tale.