Cold in Florida

It is warmer in Salt Lake City right now than it is in the panhandle of Florida. It is freezing. We were planning on attending church services at 9 am at the Mississippi state park where we stayed last night. They were having a 9 am service at a pavilion by the lake. But it was too cold for church outside ! Too bad that would have been wonderful. We had to go about 300 miles today so we couldn't wait until 11 am service.

We have passed about a thousand Baptist churches on our way down here ! There are some huge churches and we haven't even been in Dallas or Houston. We've also been thru a couple of towns where it looked like they had more churches than people !

I was finally able to identify the beautiful flowering vine that has been every were from East Texas on. It is yellow jessamine or yellow jasmin. That is everywhere in the forest with occastional redbud trees Today there were kind of an orangy red blooming tree mixed in also. Then in all of the little towns, everybody has lots of big azaleas and camelias in bloom. Very pretty.

I can't believe all of the forests of pine trees down here. Lots of lumber mills. Somehow, I never thought of Louisiana and Mississippi as logging states. Lots of reforestation going on so miles and miles of little and medium size pines.

We have discovered why so many mobile homes get destroyed in storms down here. It's because there are lots and lots of them. There are also lots of large beautiful brick homes.

The drive went well today although it was very windy. Truck and trailer handled well even in the wind.