Shortly after my last update, we decided to leave our hotel in MS bc they couldn’t properly maintain their hot tub. It never had a chemical smell to it at all though I was told they refilled the water daily and they put in a chlorine tablet. After we both got slammed by toxins one night from the hot tub gone bad, it led to looking harder for the next place to go. The outdoor air was on the edge of what I could tolerate, but without a good hot tub, it was intolerable. I really liked the staff and would’ve liked to have stayed, but it wasn’t meant to be I guess. They’re going to get lots of rain with Hurricane Ida so maybe God intentionally moved us farther west bc of that. We tossed about the idea of going back to Lakeland if the hot tub was fixed, which it’s not, and going back to our first hotel we stayed in for a longer period of time in OK bc we knew the level of service that would be provided. We opted for the second option and Wednesday morning set out on an 11 hour drive to OK.
Western MS and eastern AR were sheer torture. The horrific toxins coming off fields of crops were awful and I had lots of GI upset and nausea. Cotton is an awful thing how it’s raised in the US. I think every awful chemical used in ag is sprayed in those fields. We drove by newly sprayed fields that smelled like flea collars. There were fields of beans ready to be picked, some being picked, and some that had been picked. It seems like when fields, regardless of the crop, are sprayed and harvested, the biome is so screwed up that the field feels AWFUL. I noticed this first with pulp tree farms in FL (think row cropped pine trees). They were so painful after the trees were cut down and the land was given a few years to rest before all that was left was bulldozed into piles and burnt. Bc of the height of the trees, you couldn’t always see the fields until you were upon them, but I could sure feel them coming. They have pulp wood fields in all different growing stages (bc the process is about 30 years) to keep a constant product coming out so there was always varying levels of badness instead of hundreds of miles of torture in a row like there is with row crops like corn, soy beans, cotton, and sorghum. The area we’re in currently has lots of ranches and grazing so it’s more tolerable though the town I like to shop in has quite a few crop fields just south of it that I have to drive by. It makes a world of difference to have a few miles instead of all the miles of fields. Much of the local crops are out and the pretty red dirt doesn’t feel so bad, again I’m sure it’s because of the relative low acreage vs it feeling so much better than other row cropped fields. We’re back to our thoughts earlier this year of this part of OK might be a decent place to land. They’ve got a pretty good political climate here on subjects that are important to us and in one article I read, OK was the number 1 state to flee to in the midst of all the crazy in our world. OKC gets weird with their mask mandates, but we don’t spend much time there so it’s ok.
It’s great to be back in the land of Braum’s and Aldi! I hit the jackpot at Walmart yesterday finding Wesley $1 shorts and swim trunks as well as 4 bottles of detailer for the truck that’s hard to find in FL. The SESA guys who live at this hotel have a charcoal grill at the hotel that they let us use. Oh man, charcoal grilled burgers are new level good!! It was a blessing that they were willing to share their grill with us.
There’s a new, since we left late Feb, front desk gal who has been super interested in our health journey and how there’s many parallels to her own health. The GM called us family in front of her yesterday and she has quickly adopted us too. I really can’t express how great this staff is. I continually marvel at how God crosses our paths so specifically to help people. I love being part of His plan.