Joe and I are in Yazoo City, Mississippi this evening after traveling across from El Dorado, Arkansas where we spent the night last night.  Last night we pulled into El Dorado about 4:30 PM, went into the motel and decided to just lie down for a short nap before going out for some dinner.  Several hours later we woke up, decided it was too late to go to dinner and decided to just go back to sleep for the night.  After having taken a long nap, you would think that we couldn't possibly be sleepy, but we slept straight through til about 7:30 this morning.

We were in pine and hardwood forests most of the morning.  It was a really pleasant day with temperatures in the mid-seventies.  With the breeze through the car, I slipped into a light jacket and put Joe's duster over my legs.  I was still dressed for summer in shorts.  I think I will have to concede that summer is over now and fall has begun to make itself known.  I can hardly believe that our trip is less than 3 weeks from being over!  It has truly become a lifestyle!   

   
We were trying to head in a southeasterly direction today and to avoid having to take a major road to the east and then another one that would take us way to the south and then another to take us back east, so we took a county road that cut off a fair number of miles.  It was gravel but well graded and shady and a beautiful drive.  We didn't meet a single car on the road for some 8 or 9 miles til it connected with the new road we needed.

This afternoon we moved out of the pine/hardwood forest lands into flat, productive farmland that was planted in soybeans and cotton.  At first, it took me a while to figure out that I was looking at cotton plants.  It seems that the fields had been planted at different times, probably to make harvesting easier so it didn't need to all be harvested at the same time.  The first fields I saw had not yet developed cotton bolls.  The further south we traveled, the more white you saw in the fields and the closer the fields were to being ready for harvest.

Southern Arkansas cotton field just about ready for harvest.  I used to work in a cotton lab at the University of Arizona and have ginned cotton in small quantities and my job was to comb debris out of the cotton fibers and straighten the fibers into small samples for further research.  I remember well those sharp little combs that would prick your fingers if you weren't being attentive.

I spoke in a previous blog about seeing pecan groves on my trip down to Louisiana to visit relatives.  I had lost those pictures in a technical snafu but was able to take a picture of another grove in western Mississippi this afternoon.  The pecans are not ready to harvest yet.  I sure wish they were.  I plan to plant a few pecan trees at our home in PA.  I'll have to plant a hardy variety that will withstand our colder winters, but luckily there are some varieties that will thrive in our area.  I will have to wait about 5 years before they produce any nuts, but I can wait.  They are such majestic shade trees too.

Just one of many old beautiful homes we saw along our route today.

Tomorrow we will probably enter Alabama.  We forgot to bring the map out of the car so I don't know where we will be headed for tomorrow evening.