"Members Only" and more members...

 Once again, if you are a serious RVer, consider joining the Elks or the Moose. Hundreds of lodges across the nation, in Canada, possibly down in Mess-ico, provide exclusive and inexpensive RV parking. Such is the case with this lodge we found in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Don't try to sneak in. You'll be shot.

 But the Elks, as well as the Moose, the Lions, the Rotary, etc., provide many other reasons other than RV parking for you to join. Community involvement, support of our troops and so on. To say nothing of $5 all-you-can-eat taco night.

 We arrived at the Hattiesburg lodge around Easter Sunday. The members were having a crawfish boil--all you could eat with all the trimmings for $15. Them little buggers cost more than tacos. The money went to charitable causes.

 But I regard crawfish as cat food, as I do most fish, so we passed on the boil and moved onto our campsite on a large and quite serene lake. This could well be the largest Elks lodge in the country, encompassing some 1200 acres, most in it in pine forest and hiking trails.

 There's fishing on the lake, playgrounds for kids, and a well-stocked bar for a couple of traveling inebriates such as we 'uns.

 Hattiesburg lodge members pay $5 for RV sites. Visiting Elks pay the princely sum of 10. RVers, believe me, you can't beat these deals.

 There's them trees. Pines, to be exact. The lodge leases around half its acreage to the forest service which harvests the lumber.

 All around Hattiesburg (including the lodge) are decorated statues of swans. It's all part of a local Chamber of Commerce effort to support arts locally.  What? Arts in Mississippi? Still don't know why swans were picked.

 Took a tour of Hattiesburg. Didn't have a clue what there was to see. The Visitors Center was closed on this day, Easter Sunday, so we had to wing it. First thing we saw was the gutted shell of the old high school that an organization is attempting to turn into condominiums or offices or something.

 And Paul's radar went off and dragged me kicking and screaming to the nearby airport where we found this static display of old military aircraft. The big one, called a "Voodoo", was flown by a Hattiesburg born and bred pilot who was shot down in Vietnam and held as a POW for seven-and-a-half years.

Saw lots of other things but this one picture was the most interesting and a bit hard to explain. We thought we had discovered a corpse but it was a dummy in fire-fighting gear outside a fire-fighting training facility. If you look closely, it explains the bumpersticker, "Fireman do it with bigger hoses" and orange pointed ones at that.  (I only noticed the strategically-placed orange cone after I loaded the photos onto my computer--that's the truth.)

So much for Hattiesburg but let me tell you, this is why you travel. To see things like this and meet interesting, nice people. For the most part.

Next, off to Natchez, dodging those killer tornadoes that swept through upper Mississippi into Arkansas, Tennessee and Alabama.