Hi, shorty!

Westward, Ho!!

This is going to be a short one.

We left Red Bay at 8:15 this morning to head for Tucson.  I have to give a Sojourners presentation at the church that our son, Joshua, preaches at on Sunday morning so we have to be there Saturday.  Therefore, this was a "make hay while the sun shine" kinda day.  Irene and I are TRYING, really, we are TRYING to S-L-O-W D--O---W----N as we travel.  Use the 2-2-2 rule: 200 miles a day, stop by 2 PM for the day and stay 2 days when you are stopped.  It hasn't happened yet.  Though we just stayed in Ocala for 2 weeks so we need to travel farther, faster and stay a shorter time at a couple of places to get our average back down. Right, Irene?

We were supposed to go from Red Bay to Memphis to Little Rock to Texarkana to Marshall according to our Garmin.  BALDERDASH!  Irene and I LOVE the Natchez Trace Parkway and take it every time we get a chance.  Today we could get on it in Tupelo and take it down to Jackson, MS and take I--20 from there to Marshall.  It's a beautiful drive along the parkway.  No commercial trucks allowed and in the middle of the week like today there is VERY little traffic of ANY kind on the parkway.

One of the amazing sights is the destruction caused by a couple of tornadoes that followed the path of the Trace in 2011.  Here's a picture of some of the trees as they now appear:

Notice how the top of every tree is just sheared off.  Here's another that Irene took today:

Once we arrived at Camp Bee  - the Campground/Headquarters for the Sojourners mission - in Marshall, TX this evening we went to Wednesday night Bible Study at Eastern Hills church of Christ.  The class was an excellent introduction to the Old Covenant Prophets.  Then we went to dinner at Chili's with Brenda and Dave Blair.  We had the Ribs (They aren't a good as Logan's but pretty good).  Brenda and Dave are among our closest friends.  Then we came back to camp and gave them a tour of the Trekker.  Last night it was Brenda and David Bott and tonight Brenda and Dave Blair. Hmmm, very interesting!

Tomorrow we are heading to Midland where we will stop for one night.  We will have dinner with Joel, Brenda and Phoebe - though Phoebe's been sick so we might have to settle for just seeing her at home.  That's it for this post. WRAP IT!