Saturday, January 5, 2008 - Jena, LA
< previous day | archives | next day >
I took a quick look around at their museum and grounds, did my laundry, dumped the waste tanks, took on fresh water, and left shortly after noon to continue on down the Natchez Trace Parkway to Natchez, Mississippi where I plan to head west on US 84 to cross the Mississippi River, Louisiana, and half of Texas.
Fuel mileage: 13 miles per gallon
At Jena, Louisiana I gassed up before parking for the night at Wal-Mart. I wanted to see what effect the easy easy driving and the new catalytic converter had on my gas mileage. The effect was dramatic. Gas mileage went from my usual 8.5 to 9 miles per gallon to an amazing 13 miles per gallon on this first tank with the new catalytic converter. An easy 50 mph run with an easy breathing engine makes quite the combination. I never dreamed I'd see a 13 miles per gallon from this old puppy. These were exceptionally easy miles and I don't expect to average any where near 13 mpg but it looks like there's a good possibility of topping 10 mpg as an average. We'll take it.
Night Camp
Wal-Mart Parking Lot in Jena AL
Wal-Mart Supercenter in Jena, LA
Wal-Mart Supercenter Store #498, 3670 West Oak Street, Jena, LA 71342 - (318) 992-1351
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.