Friday, January 4, 2008 - Port Gibson MS
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Don't feed the aligators, Natchez Trace Parkway, Southern Mississippi, January 4, 2008
Yes, alligators, up here near Jackson, Mississippi
Occasionally at least; there is a sign at this roadside nature attraction on the Natchez Trace Parkway cautioning one not to feed the normally shy alligators lest they become less shy.
McGivney Tire and the catalytic converter
The mechanic at McGivney Tire Service took good care of me and after overcoming a bit of trouble getting the old exhaust system to mate up with the new catalytic converter saw me on my way in the early afternoon. I made the right decision in getting the catalytic converter replaced. The change in engine performance is dramatic. She can breathe again. I had no idea LD was laboring so seriously trying to blow hot exhaust through a plugged pipe. No wonder the exhaust manifolds turned blue. The engine feels free and easy breathing and runs and accelerates much smoother. And the exhaust manifold leak I've dreaded finding someone willing to fix seems to be non existent. Even the hesitation and stumbling that started this whole round of repairs is largely gone. I'd wager gas mileage is better too. I never would have guessed a partially blocked catalytic converter would have effected performance in so many ways.
Grand Gulf Military Park
Late afternoon, on the Natchez Trace Parkway, headed for toward Natchez, Mississippi, I saw a sign for Grand Gulf Military Park and campground. On a whim I decided to check it out even though it was 12 miles out of my way. Just maybe it would be on the Mississippi river and I'd like that. It's way down a dead end road that indeed stops just shy of the river. I think. It's dark; about 6 pm. When I go by the gates are closed. Darn. I went on by to the end of the road to turn around and when I got back up to the park the crew had the gate open and people in the road waving me down. What's happening? Did the Nuclear power plant up the road let one rip? Naw. They saw LD and me go slowly by and wanted to invite me in. They got me settled and asked me to drop by the museum tomorrow morning to check in. No Wal-Mart for LD and me tonight.
Night camp
Grand Gulf Military Park, Port Gibson, Mississippi
A Siberian dog signal-howl
A camp in the middle of a clear, dark winter's night presents a strange, wild appearance. I was awakened, soon after midnight, by cold feet, and, raising myself upon one elbow, I pushed my head out of my frosty fur bag to see by the stars what time it was. The fire had died away to a red heap of smouldering embers. There was just light enough to distinguish the dark outlines of the loaded sledges, the fur-clad forms of our men, lying here and there in groups about the fire, and the frosty dogs, curled up into a hundred little hairy balls upon the snow. Away beyond the limits of the camp stretched the desolate steppe in a series of long snowy undulations, which blended gradually into one great white frozen ocean, and were lost in the distance and darkness of night. High overhead, in a sky which was almost black, sparkled the bright constellations of Orion and the Pleiades--the celestial clocks which marked the long, weary hours between sunrise and sunset. The blue mysterious streamers of the aurora trembled in the north, now shooting up in clear bright lines to the zenith, then waving back and forth in great majestic curves over the silent camp, as if warning back the adventurous traveller from the unknown regions around the Pole. The silence was profound, oppressive. Nothing but the pulsating of the blood in my ears, and the heavy breathing of the sleeping men at my feet, broke the universal lull. Suddenly there rose upon the still night air a long, faint, wailing cry like that of a human being in the last extremity of suffering. Gradually it swelled and deepened until it seemed to fill the whole atmosphere with its volume of mournful sound, dying away at last into a low, despairing moan. It was the signal-howl of a Siberian dog; but so wild and unearthly did it seem in the stillness of the arctic midnight, that it sent the startled blood bounding through my veins to my very finger-ends. In a moment the mournful cry was taken up by another dog, upon a higher key--two or three more joined in, then ten, twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, until the whole pack of a hundred dogs howled one infernal chorus together, making the air fairly tremble with sound, as if from the heavy bass of a great organ. For fully a minute heaven and earth seemed to be filled with yelling, shrieking fiends. Then one by one they began gradually to drop off, the unearthly tumult grew momentarily fainter and fainter, until at last it ended as it began, in one long, inexpressibly melancholy wail, and all was still.