Cruising through Mississippi

Here's what I am thinking right now about Mississippi:

1. m-i-crooked letter, crooked letter-i-crooked letter, crooked letter-i-hump back, hump back-i.
Who learned this when they were young? Does anyone out there other than me remember this? Or was it just a North Carolina thing??

2. Big-*&# grasshoppers reside there.
Here's what I mean, see below photo. I'm not sure you can sense his size here but he was like the size of my thumb. It's ok to snap a shot of him but I would not want him on me. And when I was pointing my digicam at him...he kept slinking around that plant leaf! As if he didn't realize he's so wide I could still see him. He was creepy the longer I gazed at him. Look at that face. Looks like an alien droid staring at me. And that body? Looks like armor to me. Like from Predator, whichever movie you liked best. There were lots of these guys around.

3. Traveling thru this state requires planning, careful planning.
We were driving back from FL and though we had our picnic basket, we craved fried chicken (when do I not crave this?) so we decided to stop at a KFC at exit 69 on IH-10 (note: do not EVER stop here again). Thus began one of our funniest dinner escapades. We got the food and it was not a great dining place so we took it to go. We figured a rest area would be good, so we stopped at the first one and it looked pretty nice. Good tables, clean, not crowded. We set out some things and see this cute little guy below. Oh, I sure did think he was adorable. UNTIL he kept coming over to our table. Sniffing out what we had. Mark tried to scare him off but he kept coming back. And then we noticed he looked kind of funny. See how his legs are? I don't recall other raccoons here in TX or even back in NC had long skinny legs like that. So we eye him closely and notice he's walk/running sort of crooked. Isn't that rabbied animals do? Act disoriented a little? By now, we just wanted to eat and this critter was aggressively pursuing us. So we laugh and take our food to the next table, after I yelled and chased him up a tree. That lasted about 20 seconds b/c he then hopped on the table we just left and then came over again to us so we chased him farther away, laughing the whole time b/c it was so ridiculous that we couldn't eat our dinner. So we got in the car and left the crazed raccoon, eyed the next rest area and kept driving and finally got into Louisianna but saw not one open rest area so we finally found a beautiful spot in a bank parking lot and sat in the comfortable, safe, air-conditioned luxury of our car and finally ate dinner. Somehow, the chicken managed to still taste ok after all that.

I guess there are some lessons here when you have to go through Mississippi:

1. Plan meals carefully if you have to eat on the road and do not stop for chicken at exit 69. :)
2. Perhaps stick with original meal plans.
3. Do not let cute animals distract you while they make plans to take food from you.
4. There are no great places to stop along IH-10 in MS. If there are, someone let us know since we'll likely drive that route again.