Tom Sawyer Campground and Memphis Deja Vu

We left our horse barn camping spot near Nashville to head further west on I-40. After a summer of unfamiliar crops, we are back in the midwest to find fields of cotton. Even though the temperature is in the 80's, the ripe bolls of cotton look more like fields of snow along the highway.

Two and half hours down the road we drove through Memphis, and across the Mississippi River.

In the middle of the bridge is a new state line, as we entered into Arkansas. There were lots of bugs on this leg of our journey, as evidenced by the bug-spattered picture taken through the front windshield.

This visit to Memphis had a touch of deja vu for us. We bought our motor home here two years ago. In fact, we went back to Davis Motorhome Mart just to say hello to our salesman. They had only four new Tiffins and one used Tiffin motor home on the lot. We wandered through them, but we are still very pleased with our Allegro Red 33AA that we are living in now. This place doesn't have a fancy building in a nice suburb location. But they do have a reputation for making some of the best deals on motor homes in the country.

As we drove the motor home into the Tom Sawyer campground, we had to giggle as we remembered our first trip here. We had just purchased the motor home, and this was Mark's first time to drive into a camping spot. It was our first time to set up using the jacks, putting out the slides, and hooking up all the utilities. That seems like a very long time ago, but it was almost exactly two years ago.

One of the neatest parts of this campground is that it sits right along the Mississippi River. In fact, there is a row of motor home spots that allow them a front wind shield view of the river.

There is a separate section for fifth wheels that allow them to back into spots so they get the best view of the river through their large rear windows. This time we are parked in the shady sites in between those two sections. There are two reasons for that: 1) those spots are cheaper; and 2) with record high temperatures forecast we are glad to have the shade.

There are benches scattered along the river, and plenty of campers are taking advantage of the chance to watch the tug boats pushing barges up and down the Mississippi. We are little surprised at the number of boats that are running well after dark. We don't hear any horns during the day, but we are hearing them at night. That's another reason we are glad to be a bit removed from the water.

The other thing that is totally unique to Tom Sawyer Campground is its laundry policy. Since we have a washer and dryer on board, we seldom notice the laundry facilities at campgrounds. But this one has big, new washers and dryers that are totally free! Our dryer is great for small loads, but seems to take forever with heavy items. So we used the opportunity to wash all our bedding and catch up with normal laundry quickly. There are lots of positives at Tom Sawyer Campground, and the only negative were the voracious mosquitoes that showed up every evening.

We are camped inside the levee that protects the surrounding area, and this campground does flood. In fact, there is a high water mark on one of the buildings. In May 2011, the river crested half-way up the second floor of one of their buildings. At that point our camping spot would have been under fifteen feet of water.

The Mississippi River is running low right now, and has a gentle current as it flows past the campground. Denisa actually was up for sunrise one morning to take a picture of the sun coming up in the east over the river.

But it's far easier to catch a picture of the sunset. With shorter days, our exploring schedule is also shorter. But that doesn't mean that we didn't find plenty of things to see in Memphis. We'll be back with more blogs on things to explore in our new home town.