We took a quick overnight trip to Tishomingo State Park to stay in a cabin.

We drove down the Natchez Trace Parkway from Florence to get there.

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No swinging on the swinging bridge!

This place was really cool, if a little toned down.

You park off the highway near a sign, there is a creek and in the creek there are round rocks.

The rocks were not particularly amazing until you look at them more closely.
They are called concretions and these are really neat.  First, they were shaped like manatee...sort of. 
Looking closely, they were full of shells.
These were thought to be created much like an oyster in a shell, layers building up over a core.

It's an Earth Cache!

The creek itself is a popular destination for local colleges.  They come out and seign and sift the sand to find bones of turtles and fish as well as shark teeth.  The local roads, having used the sand in the creek as building material, are studded with shark teeth.

Close-up of the rocks.

Freezing cold fossil-filled sandy-bottomed creek.
We skipped the wade this trip, too cold!

Pretty neat!

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On to our cabin!

This is the 6-person cabin, they allow up to 8 people.
A 6-person cabin is $55 a night, a 4 person cabin (up to 6) is $50 a night.

Each cabin has 2 fireplaces, the smaller cabins have on on each end, this one had 2 in the middle, one for each large room.

There were 2 double beds-quite comfy-in the bedroom and a fold-out couch in the other room.  It was not as comfy!

Through this hall, there is a door going outside to the picnic table, fire ring and grill.  The cabins were located above a 20 or so foot cliff and you could hear the creek rushing by below.  We went out to get dry leaves to help our firestarting just after dark and listened to owls calling.  'Something' went crashing off down the hill, too!

The worst thing about the cabin was this poor deer.  It freaked the kids out, they were offended that someone would decorate with a dead animal and the eyes made them feel creepy, so we had to cover the face. 

No soup for you.
Unless you bring your own stew pot.

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We left the state park and headed out to see what we could see.
We followed the signs to Crows Neck Environmental Education Center on Bay Springs Lake.

What a find!  It's a wonderful hands-on center offering group programs ranging from a school-day to a week in length, everything from orienteering and canoeing to nature studies and hikes.  Much like Camp McDowall in Alabama, but with a broader range of times.

The director gave us loads of information and since there was not a group at the camp, let us loose to explore.
We headed off to see the historic cemetery:

Esther Lee
Dau. of
Mr-Mrs W. Butler
Sept 25 1925
Oct 4 1925
At rest with
Jesus

This same couple had buried another infant daughter 12 years earlier, her name was Alma.

Sometimes poking around these old places of death, you get a greater glimpse of life than you may have bargained for.

We left the cemetery and headed back to the lodge following the shorline of the lake.

The lake is run by the Army Corps of Engineers and the environment center sits on a 530 acre pennisula jutting out into the 6,600 acre lake.
The lake is unique to my experience in that there are no buildings allowed along the shoreline.  Paddling around the lake all you see is natural wooded shore and small pennisulas covered in wild grasses and cattails.  And animal tracks!

Cattail seed

Canada Goose print

Raccoon print

Canada Geese-who were not as delighted with our walking around a curve and spotting them as we were!

Ben heads up a small wash to see the small songbirds that were all over the place in the short grasses.

Fox tracks

Same tracks, optical illusion!

It was time to leave the center and start our way back home.

We headed out, stopping for a geocache along the Tenn-Tom waterway and I spotted a sign for an overlook, so we headed up-to discover it was closed due to hunting season.  There was a second sign for the Holcut Memorial and so we wandered down that way and found the site of the only town that had to be moved to accomodate the Tenn-Tom waterway.

Matt, having missed a geocache because several roads were blocked off for hunting was looking at his cache list and saw we were only 6 miles from the highest point in Mississippi, where there was another cache, so we headed over there.

For a brief moment, Jake's head was the highest point in Mississippi.

The single view. 

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Back at the Parkway, we opted to head south to Tupelo and drive back across from there, so we could make a few more stops on the way.

Pharr Mounds

After the mounds, the Parkway was detoured and we missed most of the rest of what we planned to see.

So, we stopped in at the Tupelo Visitor Center and then started our way east, back home.

We got home around 8 p.m.
The kids acted as if they had been gone a week, even remarking our kitten, Tuesday Jane, did not look as though she had grown any.
I guess it was a busy 36 hours, we had a great time and got to see new places-always a bonus. 
I highly reccommend Tishomingo State Park as a quick and inexpesive get-away!