We left College Station on Friday and made a quick stop at our storage building to put a few things away. We then started the long slog to get out of Texas when we entered Louisiana around 1400, we decided to pull into the Welcome Center Rest Area and have a late lunch. We had barely got parked when Claudia looked out and noticed the traffic on I-20 was at a complete stand still. We looked on line and noticed that a fatality accident was just up the road from us. Wow, so close that if we were still on the road we may have been too close for comfort to the scene of the accident. Since it was a fatality, it took almost three hours to get the scene acceptable to allow traffic flow. We started up the RV and joined the slow moving traffic. The accident involved at least two 18 Wheelers and one car. (Check out the photos of the accident in the photo album.)

After we got past the scene we were off to Vicksburg where we spent the night at a Cracker Barrel.

The next morning we went to fuel up the RV and our bodies. The RV drank gasoline while we opted for a Whataburger Taquito that was next door to the gas station. After phoning in our order, we waited for about 30 minutes at curb side service. This is a liberal use of the word service because it took talking with four different people over the 30 minutes before they finally delivered the two taquito’s. The only good thing at that point is that the guy delivering breakfast gave us the taquito’s for free due to the long wait.

We then started toward the Natchez Trace Parkway where we were trying to decide to just go far enough to exit and get to Columbus, or go all the way to Tupelo before turning to Columbus.

We made a game day decision to press on to Tupelo as we approached the exit to Columbus. Just after we pulled into the Tupelo Visitor Center, I noticed a classic convertible car pull into the parking lot. I told Claudia she needed to come look at this car. When she did, she also noticed that the occupants were our cruising friends from Austin, Texas. We first met Randy and Eileen back in 2016 on our first Loop in Norfolk, VA. We had last visited together back in 2020 when we cruised the Tennessee River and stayed a week at the Marina they keep their boat at under cover. They call it their summer cottage in the mountains.

The four of us sat in the RV for three hours before we realized how late it was getting and we both needed to get to our destinations for the night.

In looking back, that little delay at Whataburger was the difference in seeing Randy and Eileen. Turns out the Visitor Center was still closed due to COVID, and they were only stopping long enough for a bathroom break.