Grand Gulf Drone

Before leaving the Grand Gulf Military Park we take a very short drive over to the Mississippi River. 

There it is in all its massive glory flowing merrily along its chosen path to the Gulf of Mexico. It is not raging nor roaring but almost skipping along as though it has embarked upon a grand adventure and is joyfully strolling on. The river is much different at ground zero, face to face. More personal but still edgy and deceptively dangerous, than when you look down on it from high above on a bridge. It almost beckons "come Tamara, let's have an escapade and be river pirates!” It is tempting.

You can see the whirlpool that caused the river to create the gulf and the several mini whirls that spin off of the larger one. We startle a couple of turtles and their splash startles us too. The edge is right in front of us we could walk right up and touch water but we don't. It has been raining and the bank is muddy and slippery.

There on the cult de sac by the river is a measuring post. It measures the river and is marked after great floods. 

The first marker is 1927 the river crested at 56.2 feet above its normal height. 1937 at 53.2 and so on during a very large flood year the board on the post is updated.  The highest level being that in 1927. A new board has been placed over the old board because in 2011 the water level rose to much higher than the current board allowed for. The river crested at 57.1 feet. There was 14 inches of water in the visitor center at the Fort.

As I had told you in a previous letter there is a nuclear power plant not far from Grand Gulf where the forts and the cemetery were located. I had no desire to see it having seen a few before. We were told the cooling tower was very visible from the roads we were going to take to get to Windsor Plantation and if we so desired we could stop and take photos near a gate. We said our farewells and drove on. As we rounded a curve in the road there it was, the cooling tower. It was impressive so we stopped I rolled down the window and snapped off a photograph.  

We drove on believing that was the location where we could get the best photo. Ok I had to agree I had not been that close to a nuclear cooling tower. Seamus and I are chattering away and having a very pleasant day when rounding another curve in the road we nearly run into a gate.  There to our right is the cooling tower. It is less than about a football field away. This thing is huge, massive, and enormous! I am stunned, Seamus is stunned we stare in silence. 

There on the bottom left side of the tower is a little blue dot. That is NOT a dot.

I roll down the window to get a clearer view as Seamus steps out of the car. We can hear the water as it is being moved with great speed in and out of the tower. 

That is a door for people to enter.

It sounds like rapids on a river. Steam is everywhere and high above the tower buzzards are riding in the thermals created by the tower. It is amazing and a bit eerie all at the same time creating a very surreal and spine tingling reaction in us.

 We photograph it and then Seamus stops, looks at me, gets back in the car and we drive off. He seems a bit unnerved and it becomes contagious. That is very close to the road, he says. Yes. There is just a fence and a gate, he says. Yes. There was no guard at the gate, he says. Yes, I noticed. How they know some terrorist won't just throw a grenade over the fence and blow it up, he says. I think a moment. The minute you stopped outside that gate they launched a drone. It was watching our every move and was ready to kill us if it had to. They watched as we photographed, they listened as we talked. The drone is following us now and in about 20 minutes we will see our first black SUV. We are in a rental you know. Highly suspicious. He laughed me off but within 20 minutes we encountered a black SUV following us, two cars back. We turned, it drove on and in 5 minutes another one. We laughed and for the rest of the day we noticed every black SUV on the road including one with blacked out windows that came upon us at a park, circled the parking lot and drove on. 

Grand Gulf Nuclear Station is the only one in Mississippi to produce electricity.  It is the largest single unit Nuclear power plant in America. Fifth largest in the world.

Glad we saw it!