Friday September 3rd 2021

It was a bright sunny day with less humidity than would seem to be normal for this time of year. The temperature peaked in the mid eighties. The forecast calls for the weather to transition to a different pattern. Late tomorrow into Sunday has a high chance of rain.

After yesterday’s hectic travel day, I slept in this morning. For the third straight day I got up to the sound of lawn mowing. Switching parks unintentionally prolonged the agony. For some reason the sounds of lawn mowing in the RV park continues to annoy me.

I walked around the campground a couple of times today for exercise. On each walk I noticed a few things that have changed since I was here at the beginning of August. The park staff has continued to do maintainable on the roads and sites. Some new gravel and crushed stone has been spread in several areas. The biggest difference I noticed was in the river level. The Mississippi River is quite a bit lower than it was last month. The river level is constantly changing based on precipitation and snow melt levels in all of the areas of the river basin. The basin for the Mississippi is just about the entire region between the Rocky Mountains in the west and the Appalachian Mountains in the east. The river level forecast calls for the level to be higher next week.

The traffic on the river seemed to be low today. It may be do to the holiday weekend, or it might be because Hurricane Ida caused the river to be closed to Navigation at New Orleans. It was only opened to New Orleans today. Earlier in the week it was closed at Baton Rouge. The river south of New Orleans is still in bad shape with grounded runaway barges and other obstacles to navigation. Most of the traffic I saw today was near nightfall. Several smaller fuel barges passed along the river in front of the RV park.

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The RV park seems to be full tonight. I saw a couple of empty sites on my last walk around, but they weren’t desirable sites. I suspect they are the last sites assigned. Some of tonight’s residents will probably leave in the morning, but other travelers will likely fill the voids.