I've had several people tell me I need to start a blog about our life here in Mississippi for a couple of reasons. First, so I can share pictures of the baby, and second so I can share pictures and stories about our life and our adventures here in Mississippi. While I can't promise to post regularly, I'll try to keep everyone up to date on what's going on with the three of us here.

I guess the best place to start a blog about our life in Mississippi is with the trip to get here. After loading everything we own into our new car and trailer, we hit the road for an almost two week trip. We spent some time in Utah and New Mexico visiting family, and then we finally started off for the last leg of our adventure, the trip across Texas and Louisiana to our new home in Starkville, MS.
We had so much stuff that every spare inch of our car was packed with our stuff. There was hardly any room for poor little Erik, who turns out to be an excellent traveler. He slept most of the time and if he did wake up and get fussy I'd just reach my hand back and hold his hand and he'd quite down.

We left Animas on Friday, and most of that day and the next were pretty boring. Texas is neither exciting nor beautiful. This is what it looked like atleast 95% of the time.

It got a little more intersting the further East we went, with oil wells and towns everywhere. This was the first oil well we saw and it was exciting just because it was something to look at. Once they were everywhere they definitly lost our interest.

Once we crossed into Louisiana things got way more interesting almost instantly.

There were trees everywhere, and occasionally we'd pass a swampy area full of cypress trees with their big buttressed roots and moss hanging down from the branches. There was also kudzo vine growing on everything, the trees, fences, power poles, road signs, etc...

We were amazed by the trees everywhere. Even the medians on the freeway were so full of trees that you couldn't see the cars coming from the opposite direction. It is so beautiful there!

Sunday morning we crossed the Mississippi River into Mississippi. Ethan had never seen the Mississippi River before and was suitably impressed. Even though I'd seen it before, it's still amazing in its incredible size!

Our first stop in Mississippi was at the Vicksburg National Military Park. It was so cool! Vicksburg was the site of a critical battle during the civil war. The whole park is full of beautiful stone monuments to the different units that fought there; it was really fun to drive around and look at them all. We were sad we didn't have more time to look at them all. We did manage to find time to spend at our favorite spot in the park, which was the museum for the USS Cairo.

The USS Cairo was a Union Iron-sided war ship, built to conquer and control the river during the war. It was the first ship in history to have been sunk by an electronically detonated mine. Recovered from the bottom of the river in the 1960's, it was put back together and now is set up so you can even walk around in it. The contents of the ship were amazingly preserved by the river mud and are on display in a nearby building.

Finally around 3 o'clock that afternoon we entered Starkville, although you'd never know it if it weren't for all the signs. There are so many darn trees everywhere!

Our apartment turned out to be way nicer than we expected and our neighbors are great. They didn't waste any time inviting us in for a cool drink, and then helped to unload our trailer and get us moved in. It's sure nice to finally be settled into our new home after almost two weeks on the road!