27,839 8:15 AM 61° F
Underway from Natchez State Park

27,896 9:44 AM 73°F
Checked in at the Louisiana Welcome Center. Reviewed the literature and costs of visiting New Orleans and decided against it this time. Halloween weekend is a “special event” with corresponding hikes in campsite fees. Beth isn’t feeling great and we’d like to be able to stay up past “cruiser’s midnight” to experience the music scene when we visit.

27,988 12:15 Stopped at Camping World to investigate intermittent low pressure alarms from a tire pressure sensor. Driving through Baton Rouge on an elevated expressway we would get an intermittent alarm.Turns out that the sensor is failing and the actual tire pressure is fine. Removed the sensor and sent an email to Pressure Pro.

28,049 1:55 PM 83°F
The Stennis, MS welcome center is a fun place to stop and stretch. Good parking, walking trails and a playground for kids. Just don’t let kids or pets out of sight. If you look carefully at the bottom left corner of the playground photo you may detect part of an alligator.

Next door to the visitor’s center is the Infinity Science Center. Associated with NASA’s Stennis Space Center, we were able to walk around and view some of the outdoor exhibits. Rocket engines are tested at Stennis, since Huntsville became to large a city for the noise and vibration associated with testing.

There are bus tours of Stennis offered from the museum on Saturdays.  We’ll have to come back!

This very cool sculpture blends technology and art as described in the associated plaque.

We didn’t know that Stennis is also home to the  U.S. Navy’s Meteorology and Oceanography Command.  That explains why there were examples of ocean monitoring buoys on display. We’ve seen some of these while out sailing, but didn’t want to get close to them at sea.


This NOMAD buoy is arrayed with sensors that collects wind speed, water quality, and wave height information.

 This one is a Tsunami Buoy formerly used as a part of the “Deep-ocean Assessment and Detection of Tsunami (DART) system sending warning information via satellite to Tsunami warning centers.

This TAO Buoy provides information to help scientists understand El Nino.

And, there had to be an F-1 engine on display. These monsters were tested here and what lifted the Saturn V rockets into orbit.

Someone had a sense of humor with the street signs leaving the parking lot. Which direction would you choose?

28,080 3:49 PM 79°F     Buccaneer State Park in Waveland, Mississippi is our stop for tonight. We reserved a spot at the back of the campground, thinking it would be away from the road noise. We should have looked at a satellite view beforehand since the park backs up to railroad tracks. Beth asked folks in a big class A if they could hear the trains come through. Replying that their air conditioners usually drown out the train sounds, except when they blow their horns at 4 in the morning, we returned to the ranger station and politely asked for a change.

The staff were congenial and found us a site at the front of the park, right across the street from the Gulf of Mexico! Prices are $27 for interior sites and $37 for ocean views.

We cooked dinner in the van and then enjoyed beverages on the sea wall as the sun set.  Traffic on the main road wasn’t bad and wound down as the evening progressed.