Saturday July 18th 9:24 Eastern

Friday, July 17th 2009
Again I am behind posting because we have had no internet. Friday morning we left AR about 10:00 or so. We headed up Route 9 to Little Rock and then headed towards Mississippi. I can’t remember all the routes right now but we ended up on Hwy 82. (Don wanted me to put that info in for future references.) Anyway, things were going well and we stopped in Greenwood Mississippi to find some souvenirs. I have found that Wal-Mart is convenient for these items if you are looking for the typical souvenirs – t-shirts, ball caps, key rings. Anyway it was early afternoon and we were doing just fine. From the way Don had figured it we were about an hour from our next destination. So around 4:00 or so we pulled out on the road & I grabbed the Atlas just to refresh our memories and low and behold we were so far from the campground it wasn’t even funny. We have found that the “Passport America” guide is not reliable. This is twice now that we have followed it and the campground was no where near where it told us to go. So we sit on the side of the road trying to get a new plan. We finally decided that we would try and make Cottondale, AL before dark. Don calls the campground and they have a spot for us. In the meantime, Donnie Lee called to say that he had to go back to the doctor for his arm and they lanced it and gave him another antibiotic. They are also having it tested to see what kind of infection it is. Please pray for him. So we are back on the road about 20 or so miles and I was talking to Kristi. Suddenly I hear that old familiar “POP” like a gun going off and I knew immediately what it was. I had just been thinking about it a few miles up the road. It was another blown tire. So Don pulls over and sure enough it is a blown tire and it is the same one that blew in WV. So I look at the map and find that there are several little towns ahead (oh, yeah we had just gone through a good size town much bigger than anything that was coming up). Anyway we are crawling along (not really) and Don sees this little mom ‘n’ pops gas station, in Stewart Mississippi, with a lot of vehicles parked there. Buy this time it is well after 5:00. He decides to get gas in everything just in case we have a very long night. So while he is getting gas, he goes in the store and it turns out that it is a little restaurant too. He asks if there is a place to by tires or a Wal-Mart close by and they tell him the nearest Wally World is about 35 miles away. They tell him of a couple of tire stores about 10 miles or so from where we were but that they were all closed since it was after 5:00. So he asks if there is a campground around and they tell him no. But they do have a huge parking area behind their store and we are more than welcome to park there for the night. Several folks in the restaurant heard what was going on and offered their assistance by telling Don of tire stores. One lady even told him she would be praying for us. Don thanks them all and comes out to tell me the “news”. He knows how bad I hate staying anywhere besides a campground and how bad I hate being in a predicament. So he tells me everything he has just learned and asks me what I think. I told him I guessed we didn’t have a lot of choice. So we pull around behind the store and park under a street light and crank the generator to get the a/c going. So we sit there a little bit and the folks just keep coming in. Don asked me did I want to there since we were going to be there a while. So we finally head over there about 6:30 and the place is packed. All the folks start asking us questions making small talk. We couldn’t even find a place to sit the place was so full. Folks are coming up to us and offering their help and asking us what we wanted to eat and what we wanted to drink. I tell you this to explain how helpful these folks were trying to be – we couldn’t even order food or complete a conversation with someone before someone else was trying to help us in some way. Don introduced me to the lady that said she would pray for us and I just about cried literally. I couldn’t believe it. You could feel the love in that store. We finally asked a man and his two kids if we could share a table with him. We finally got around to ordering and everyone was talking about how good the food was there. I told them it had to be because the place was packed. The “to go orders” were amazing too. The owner came out several times to check on us to make sure we had been waited on and that everything was ok. One man gave Don his telephone number and told him to call if he needed help or anything at all he would come to help. The man we were sharing the table with gave Don another tire company number and even offered to go to his house and take a tire off one of his trucks to help us out. As we were sitting there eating I began to laugh out loud. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t even tell Don what I was laughing about. When I could finally talk, I told him that this was what you see on sitcoms. Anytime someone breaks down it is in one of those little tiny towns with nothing but a mom ‘n’ pops type store. But this time everyone was trying to help us instead of putting us off and we didn’t hear any banjo music (a reference to the movie “Deliverance”). Those folks couldn’t have been willing to do more for us if we had been family. So if you are ever on Hwy 82 in Stewart Mississippi stop by Nail’s One Stop and tell ‘em Don and Vicki sent ya. After eating we headed back to the camper and popped in a dvd and I sat down with my crocheting and Don went to sleep in the floor. The generator was still running (for the a/c) so we couldn’t sleep in our bed. I stayed up until about 11:30 just to keep an eye on things and finally went to sleep on the couch. Don woke up sometime before 1:00 and turned the generator off and opened all the windows but we just stayed in the living room.


Saturday July 18, 2009
About 5:00 they opened the store and about 5:30 the gas tanker came in. We finally got up about 6:30 and headed into Eupora to check out 2 tire stores. One wasn’t open and the other didn’t have the size tire we needed. So we decided to head to that town about 30 miles away with the Wal-Mart. That’s where the other tire store was located as well. The town is called Starkville. This is where Mississippi State University is. Don had called the tire store before we left Eupora and so they were expecting us. They pulled us right in and they had two tires that fit perfectly (really long story a little bit shorter – Don decided to get two tires instead of just replacing the one that blew). The man gave them to us at a discount and he kept coming out to check the progress. So if you are ever in Starkville Mississippi on Stark Rd stop by and see Terry at Gateway Tire and tell him we sent ya there too! We finally got left about 10:00 and headed to Hardee’s for a bite to eat. After breakfast we headed back to Hwy 82 and on to Alabama. We stopped in Tuscaloosa about lunch time for more souvenirs and then headed on to Georgia. We crossed back in to Eastern time at the Georgia line. We made Austell (West Atlanta) before 6:00 and we are staying at Atlanta West Campground. We just pulled in and hooked up to the water and power. We finally had supper about 7:30. There are no church services here and check out time is 11:00 so I don’t think we will make church in the morning. We hope to be home sometime tomorrow evening. I have no pictures for now but will add some later.