Location: Jackson, Mississippi 

Car Mileage: 211,248 Miles 

Trip Mileage: 957 Miles 

Despite the fact I have driven close to 1,000 miles I still don’t feel like I have started my trip yet. Everything before San Antonio feels like practice. Each day has gotten a little less stressful. However, Friday had me very anxious. I had to pack my Budget truck, drive it 2.5 hours, unpack, and drive it another hour to its drop off location all before 5 PM to avoid the $10 after hours key drop fee. “All for $10?” you’re thinking. “Are you sure you can afford this trip?” Budget had already increased what I thought was a great deal of a $100 rental to $215 thanks to some careless customer service, and I was not about to let them take another penny out of my pocket.  

Saturday was less stressful, but I still needed to be in Lexington by noon for lunch with college friends and in Nashville by dinner. This 6.5 hour drive took me through Tell City, IN to visit a closed drive-in restaurant. I am presently obsessed with this Frostop drive-in chain the same way a three-year-old is obsessed with trains or your father is obsessed with World War II. I drove two hours out of my way knowing it would be closed, but I got the picture and the memory I set out for.

Saturday night I was lucky enough to have a friend in Nashville with a spare bedroom and a rental agreement that didn’t charge him for water. 

That brings us to Sunday. Overall, Sunday was uneventful as I drove from Nashville to Greenville with a short stop in Memphis. Last night was the first night I spent in my car since the dress rehearsal in January. I quickly learned that January in Cincinnati is not the same as April in Mississippi, and my car became much more crowded in the final days as I packed a dozen more tiny things. I will definitely need to improve organization so the transition from day mode to sleep mode is less clunky.  

This is a good opportunity to explain my layout. Let’s start with day mode.

The goal while packing was to leave enough space for two additional travel companions and deter criminals from breaking in. I am still not sure if people would be less likely to break in if they see that someone is clearly living in their car, or if most of my valuables are hidden in the trunk. Would I look homeless and therefore have less to steal if my bed was out? I’ll be sure to poll local crime syndicates along the way to see what they think. In day mode, most of my things are more difficult to access. Converting to my sleep setup took around 10 minutes and required opening every door and the trunk.

In sleep mode the narrowest point is around my upper thigh. The shotgun seat slides and leans forward to give me head room. The passenger seat becomes flooded with miscellaneous items displaced by my body. My feet touch the cold metal of the trunk, and my head nearly reaches the upholstery of the passenger seat. As I have mentioned before, it’s snug. How snug though? If I heard a knock at my window while I was winding down and opened the door to find Megan Fox from Transformers asking me if there was any room for one more, I would hand her my spare sleeping bag and sleeping pad and wish her well. I DARE Megan Fox to find me in Idaho and put this to the test.  

My actual sleeping spot was in Harlow’s casino parking lot, which sits right on the Mississippi River. I got permission from the patrolling security guard to sleep in my car, which will probably make this one of the safest places I car camp. What I should have anticipated but didn’t is the heat and humidity. As I tried to fall asleep last night it was 75 degrees with 78% humidity. If you don’t know what humidity in terms of percentage means, then you are just like me, but Google says “Above 70% (humidity) the air can feel stifling and suffocating” which I really didn’t need a scholarly article to verify as I was breathing it in last night. Overall, the sleeping wasn’t as bad as I was expecting it to be while trying to fall asleep. My main disappointment came when I woke up at 6:20 am this morning (probably a record for a voluntary wakeup) to watch the sunrise just to find it completely hidden by chalky white skies. Unfortunately for Greenville and potentially Mississippi as a whole, I am going to have to make broad assertions on this trip based on a couple days or brief moments. Mississippi’s sunrise will have a chance to redeem itself tomorrow.