Adventurous Leila

Guess where we are?!? TENNESSEE!! Have you ever heard of Meriwether Lewis? I’m sure you’ve read about him in school. He was the leader of the Lewis and Clark expedition. We’ve been staying at the Meriwether Lewis Campground for the last 9 days. Just outside of the campground is the Meriwether Lewis Monument and Natchez Trace. The Natchez Trace parkway is 444 miles long that goes through three states, Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee. It was used by the American Indians among many other very important people in history. The Trace has three free campgrounds and we stayed at the most northern one.

We went into the nearest town Hohenwald to explore and ended up at a little museum. There were so many cool things about the history and they even had a safari game we got to play. The first room you entered was a display cabin showing how life looked many many years ago. They slept on a bed made of ropes. There was an audio story playing that said “the kids knew it was time to move out when their supper plates were shattered on the table.” That meant their parents weren’t going to feed them any more, lol. The last room in the museum had a display of Sacagawea with jewelry items that the Indians offered during Lewis and Clarks expedition. After the museum we went to a little cafe. We had coffee, smoothies and yummy treats. There was a guy playing live music with his guitar, we planned to stay and hangout but it literally was closing moments after we got there. Apparently this whole town closes at 4, so we headed back to camp.

We met a colorful character named Robert E. Lee, people know him as Mississippi Redneck but we called him Red for short. He’s 80 years old and has been on the road since he was 16. He wears the coolest clothes ever! Some missed matched socks, red and green pants with yellowish brown jacket. But the coolest part about Red is his truck/trailer thing, I don’t think there’s a word for it lol. It has so many mailboxes on it that he uses for storage. He pretty much has an entire art gallery on the side of his rig, as well as 50 million licenses plates and a duck squad sitting on top of a bull horns with a rooster mounted to the front. Oh and I cant forget about his microwave painted red with pineapple stickers strapped to the side along with a moonshine still.

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “never judge a book by its cover” and you never should because Red ended up being a great neighbor. We spent many days hanging out by the fire with him and another lovely camper Rhonda. Rhonda had a vintage camper that goes in the bed of her truck. She had cute yellow vintage chairs that one even rocked. She travels full time with her two little dogs, they are so adorable and she even let me hold them.

We were having a great morning in the RV eating breakfast when all of a sudden we heard Rhonda yelling “LAUREN, LAUREN”. When we went to the door she told us “Red had this great idea, we should all pitch in to make some stone soup over the fire.” BTW stone soup is a European folk story in which hungry strangers convince the people of a town to each share a small amount of their food in order to make a meal everyone enjoys. Of course Red had this idea lol. We told Rhonda we would love to and got together some food to contribute. We made up signs and hung around the campground saying “ Stone Soup 6pm, All Invited! Bring something to contribute” Although it rained all day long, a few people still showed up. I wasn’t sure how the soup was going to turn out with so many different things thrown together but it was BOMB.COM. We spent a lot of time with them hanging around the fire talking but sadly there was a cold front coming through so Red and Rhonda headed out the next day.

Tennessee has been so cold but beautiful, Keep an eye out for part two where I’ll be telling you all about our hikes, waterfalls and Nashville!