Crusin’

January 7, 2012

Mississippi often gets a warm spell in January. I’ve always loved these brief interludes of perfect weather. We have been enjoying one of these interludes for a few days now. Today, I think it got into the 70’s. The sun was shining, so my dad, my brother and I went out on the Natchez Trace Parkway (a scenic road) to soak in the beautiful weather.

The Natchez Trace Parkway runs along the Ross Barnett Reservoir for a while. We live somewhere on the far side of the Reservoir (I think…I’m not so good with directions).

On up the parkway, there is the Cypress Swamp, which can take on a very mysterious and creepy air. As we were walking along the trail today, we heard a clap of thunder as a storm began to roll in. That definitely added to the general atmosphere.

The mysterious Cypress Swamp trees.

We went a little more, and came to a place I used to often visit with my good friend. We spent a lot of time at this spot studying, or reading, or just relaxing. While there, the storm cloud really started to gather.

On the way back, we experienced a heavy downpour. But it didn’t last too long.

And then everything cleared up beautifully and we saw a rainbow over the water.

This was my favorite tree for a long time. If you look closely, you can see the rainbow making a brief special appearance.

Doesn’t look like January, does it?

Tonight, we all got to see some beautiful colors down by the water near our house. We couldn’t really see the sunset itself, but we could see the effects of the sunset.