Ozark, AL to Tupelo, MS

We had set our alarm last night for 8 a.m. this morning, but we woke up at 7:00 - our bodies must still be on Eastern Time. Everything went well this morning in getting ready to leave Ozark Travel Park until I tried to put the living room slide in - nothing happened. I pressed the switch again - still nothing! Fortunately the third time was the charm. We left the campground a little before 9:00 and headed north on US-231.

When we got to Montgomery we took Taylor Road up to I-85 and then west to I-65 and then north to Birmingham. About 40 miles south of Birmingham we saw a construction crew repairing a drain in the median of I-65 and the traffic on the south bound lanes was reduced to 1 lane. The traffic was backed up for 4 miles and we were so glad that we weren't on that section of I-65.

From May Travels

We drove through Birmingham on I-65 to I-20 west and then north on US-78. We drove through Forestdale which is northwest of Birmingham and saw some of the damage there from the April 27th tornado. I got a couple of photos, but they only show a small part of what we saw.

From May Travels

From May Travels

By now it was almost 12:30 and we were trying to find a place to pull off & have lunch. We saw a Piggly Wiggly too late to pull into the first driveway and the second driveway was on a side street. As soon as we turned onto the side street we realized that the angle of the drive was too steep for us to attempt with the motorhome. We wound our way through a residential area to get back onto US-78. We found a church with a large parking lot that we could get in and out of and stopped there for lunch. Thank goodness for Microsoft Streets & Trips on our laptop. We have a Garmin GPS, but with the laptop's larger screen it's easier to look at the map and figure out which is the best way to go.

Once we were back on US-78 it was smooth sailing. US-78 will eventually be I-22 when it is finished.


We crossed into Mississippi just before 3 p.m. At Tupelo we took US-45 north to Barnes Crossing Road and then south on SR-145 to the Wal-Mart Supercenter. We had stayed here in October 2007. We arrived here at 3:30 and the temp was near 90°. The weather forecast for Tupelo is predicting tonight's temperatures to be in the high 60's, so it should be comfortable - I hope.

From May Travels

I called the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Tupelo and spoke with an assistant manager and confirmed that we could park overnight in the parking lot after we did our shopping.