September 18th, 2005
This update is being done at my campsite at Lake Sylvia in the Ouachita National Forest just a bit south of the Ozarks in Arkansas. I found the peace necklace on the ground here. It's made in China. China is known for making Peace through Plastic.
Yesterday I had considered going to Graceland but just stopped at Jiffy Lube in the outskirts of Memphis for an oil change instead then came on through to get my first night of camping in this whole trip. It's nice, except for the campground host at the other end of the camping loop I'm the only one here and someone kindly left a nice cache of firewood which made for a nice fire last night. I had some chicken and a red bell pepper I had prepared at the Comfort Inn back in Chattanooga that was marinating in some Spiedie marinade I picked up back in Binghamton. I got the mesquite grill perfect and it all cooked up beautifully. (I found skewers by now which helped).
Unfortunately the lake is pretty dry or else I'd have a nice view of the lake from my camp as well. Probably the best one at the site. A sign informs me that the lake was drained to do some maintenance and then there hasn't been enough rain since to fill her back up. An opossum or some similar creature came through last night just as I was ready to turn in for the night. Then he came back and heckled my tent until I managed to scare him off. Woke up and made a farmer's bath which was kind of refreshing. Since no one was around I just leisurely stripped down and washed up. Actually makes for a nice change from showers.
Yesterday I also hit the Casey Jones museum, which isn't much to speak of but was along the way. At night by the fire I experimented with some time exposures and manual settings on the camera. By the way all these photos are done on a Cannon Digital Elph PowerShot camera. It's the size of a pack of cigarettes, literally I compared them and the dimensions are within 1/8" I imagine some genius on a design team pulling out a pack of smokes and saying "Team: Our goal is to make a camera this big" It's pretty impressive and does short videos also (I have several from this trip but they are too big to upload to my server with the connections I have). What I really need is a tripod. I should have had one to start with. I need to put that on my shopping list next time I find a metro shopping area.
Gas was as low as $2.519. That wouldn't have seemed cheap a year ago, but that fifty cents per gallon sure makes a noticeable difference when I fill up compared to earlier prices I experienced.
More Photos!
An all new low gas price for the trip
Cedar Grove, TN
Old Country Store
Casey Jones Museum
Jackson, TN
Old Country Store
Casey Jones Museum
Jackson, TN
Casey Jones Museum
Jackson, TN
Tim in Triplicate
Fireside Digital Time Exposure Experiment
Lake Sylvia camp
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