Rocky Springs Campground

Wednesday April 8…10:30pm

Had a good sleep at the visitor center. Left there around 9am, and made our way around the town of Natchez towards the entrance to the parkway. Our GPS unit has maps that are a few years old now, and they’ve built a new road and interchange so by following the signs we get to the new entrance to the parkway. The road itself is in brand new condition, and has a 50 mph (80 kmh) speed limit. It’s a pleasure to drive on.

The Natchez Trace parkway goes for 444 miles (720 kms) from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee. It follows an old foot path and horse trail that was used by the early settlers in the 1700’s. Parts of the original trail are still used by hikers today.

We stopped at a couple of points of interest, but found them to be pretty boring. We decided we’d be better off getting to the campground early, and taking advantage of our day there…so we didn’t stop again.

As we pulled into the Rocky Springs campground, we saw that it was pretty busy. There are only 22 official sites, and it is free to camp here, but there are no hookups. You get a decent parking spot, with a fire ring and a picnic table. For some reason, the Quebecers really like the Natchez Trace parkway. Every rig we see as we’re driving into the campground, is from Quebec. We pull over into the first available site, and I walk further on to see if there’s anything better. I immediately find something far better, and run back to get Sherman before somebody else pulls in. The problem is that because there are no electrical hookups here, lots of people will want to be running generators, and we don’t like the noise that creates. We are lucky enough to be able to get a site around the corner that is far away from most of the other units here. In fact, we think we ended up with the very best site in the park!

Our spot at Rocky Springs campground...away from everyone and their generators!

We took Whiskey for a long walk on some of the trails here. We were gone about an hour and a half.

Part of the old Natchez Trace

Later, we took the bikes out and explored further. Found another trail that goes to a waterfall about 2.5 miles (4 kms) away. We think we’ll hike that one tomorrow. As we were riding around the campground loop, we counted the rigs. There are 22 official campsites. There are 25 rigs parked up, with some sharing sites. 19 of them are from Quebec. We can’t really figure this out. My thinking is that because there are no services here, the Americans don’t like it. There are of course some “full hook up” campgrounds in the area, so maybe that’s where everybody else goes? I dunno. It just seems strange to have so many Quebecers here compared to anybody else.

A couple walked by with their dog this afternoon, and because they stopped to say “hi” to Whiskey, we ended up talking to them and they invited us to their campfire this evening. So that’s what we did. There were another couple there from Rockland Ontario, just east of Ottawa. Small world sometimes!

Temperature inside Sherman when we woke up this morning was a comfortable 14C (58F) and it warmed up to about 24C (74F) this afternoon, with a bright blue sunny sky all day long.

Total nights sleeping in a motorhome…528

April Fuel $221.05 CAN

April Grocery $104.46 CAN

April Overnight costs $ 46.50 CAN