Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge

One of our first adventures here was our trip to the Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge. We were bored Saturday afternoon so we decided to go for a drive. There were some areas of town we hadn't seen yet and we figured we might as well check them out. The drive aroud town was fun, but not super exciting. We found ourselves on a road that headed south out of town and decided to see where it went. It sure was a pretty drive! There were lots of pretty houses and lots and lots of trees. We've started to get excited any time we come across a big open stretch of land; we're just not used to all the trees! After driving awhile we came to the Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge and decided to check it out. At first it was a little boring; all you could see were more trees. Then we saw a sign for a boardwalk to a lake and decided to check it out.
It was awesome! The boardwalk led us off through the trees and into a swampy area. Most of the water was gone this time of year, but it was still really cool!

There was Cypress trees growing everywhere, with what appeared to be huge vines hanging off them. You could almost see Tarzan swinging through the forest on them! Apparently these are the areal roots of the wild grape vines that grow in the swamp. When the swamp is full, the roots can't breathe and so they send out these vine-like roots that hang all over the place.

Sticking out of the ground was a forest of "tree's knees", which are growths up through the soil, about a foot high, that come from the tree roots. These serve the same purpose as the areal roots on the vines, making possible for them to breathe when the swamp is full.

Bluff Lake, at the end of the boardwalk, was really pretty. It had large carpets of lily pads that were really cool. The leaves were at least two feet in diameter, easily the biggest lily pads I'd ever seen. All over the lake were tree stumps sticking out above the surface of the water.

We spent quite a while just enjoying the water fowl and the view here. As you can see though, Erik wasn't terribly impressed with the whole thing.

We really enjoyed our surprise visit to Noxubee and can't wait to go back and see some more of the area. The biggest dissapointment of the day was when on our way out of the refuge we stopped at an information booth and discovered that there are alligators living in Bluff Lake and we hadn't seen a single one. We're going to have to keep going back until we see one. We'll have to keep a safe distance from the edge though. We were talking to a couple in our ward and they told us one of their friends had been walking her dog along the lake shore and a gator jumped out and almost got the dog. They also told us there is a 13 foot alligator that calls Bluff Lake home. Poor Ethan is now not allowed to go fishing there as he'd hoped to do. I still can't wrap my mind around the idea that I live somewhere where there are wild alligators. I guess I'm going to have to see it to believe it.

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!