Tupelo, MS to Springfield, MO

Apparently we still haven't adjusted to being in the Central Time Zone, we woke up at 7 a.m. again this morning. None of us slept too well last night (including Tinker) even though we had a 12v fan blowing across the bed - it was just really warm and didn't cool down until early this morning. Tinker found a spot on the kitchen floor that was fairly cool and slept there part of the night.

We were on the road at 8:00 (which is REAL early for us) and we stopped at a Shell station near the Wal-Mart Supercenter to get gas in the RV ($3.599 a gal). The clerk told Mike that gas prices had come down almost 20 cents in the last few days.

We drove northwest on US-78 and west on CR-175 south of Memphis to I-55. We crossed the Mississippi River and saw that the flood waters reached about 4 miles inland near Mound City, AR.

From May Travels

We left I-55 near Gilmore, AR and continued north on US-63. We had originally planned to spend tonight at Perkins RV Park in Jonesboro, but realized that we would be in Jonesboro about noon and that was too early to stop for the day. We decided to continue on to Springfield, MO where we had planned to spend tomorrow night.

When we got to Jonesboro we started to look for somewhere to stop for lunch and found a Big Lots store with a large parking lot. We were back on the road by 12:45 and took US-63 north to Missouri. We enjoyed driving through the hills of northern Arkansas.

From May Travels

When we were near Seymour, MO we saw three Amish families traveling in their buggies along US-63.

From May Travels

We arrived here at Timbercrest RV Park a little after 5:00 and traveling 385 miles today. We started out in Mississippi and drove through parts of Tennessee and Arkansas and are now in Missouri. We're using our Passport America membership to stay here. We have full hookups (50 amp) and a pull through site for $15.

From May Travels

I tuned in the local TV stations and found out that there was severe weather heading this way. We were concerned because the TV stations were tracking tornado activity near Joplin, MO and the storm was heading east - Springfield is east of Joplin. We did have some heavy rain and some wind, but no hail and no tornado. The worst of the weather went south of Springfield. After the storm passed, Mike went outside and took some photos of a double rainbow in the sky over Springfield.

From May Travels

We were SO LUCKY! The reports we've seen so far of the damage done in the Joplin area is terrible and about 2 dozen lives lost so far. The hospital there looked like a bomb had gone off and vehicles on I-44 apparently were "tossed around". I'll say again, we were very lucky tonight.