Loosing Track of Time on The Trace

 Aloha all,

when the ladies at the visitor center in Natchez told us that we could spend a whole week on the Natchez Trace, I had a feeling we might be able to beat that. We love it when we can take all the time we want to get somewhere…or even go somewhere different all together. It’s been two weeks since we started on the Natchez Trace and we are only about half way through.  

We might be the slowest to drive the Natchez Trace, but we are not the first: Ulysses Grant, Bunt, Jefferson Davis and Ann have all been on it. Elvis Presley and Oprah Winfrey were both practically born on it. Meriwether Lewis died on it. 

Mapping our track along the Natchez Trace

Driving the Natchez Trace is a unique experience. It’s a whole different kind of road and it has a very unique feel to it. Here’s a quick recap, in case you are not familiar with the history of “The Trace”: Originally, this route between Natchez, Mississippi and Nashville, Tennessee was part of a network of trails used by Native Americans mostly for trading. There are still several “Indian Mounds” along the route, including the “Emerald Mound” just outside Natchez, which is the second largest in America. Starting in the late 1700’s, pioneers walked the same routes to settle in what was then the western frontier. in 1801, President Thomas Jefferson designated it as a national post road, clearing it wide enough for wagons to be used. 

The Trace saw its peak usage for the next three decades, when so called “Kaintucks” took all kinds of goods from the more developed Ohio River region down the Mississippi on wooden floats. There was no way to go upstream on the Mississippi before steamboats were introduced, so when the Kaintucks got to Natchez or New Orleans, they sold their goods, disassembled their floats and sold that lumber, too. To get back up north, they walked up the Natchez Trace or rode on a horse if they could afford one. During that time there were over 50 'stands' along the trace, offering provisions, food and very sparse accommodations to the travelers. We visited Mount Locust, one of only two surviving stands. Once steamboats allowed the much easier return upriver, the trace became obsolete and almost forgotten. 

In the early 1900’s, first efforts were made to establish a new Natchez Trace Parkway, commemorating the historic route. In 1938 it became on official unit of the National Park Service System. The new road follows the old trace as much as possible, but more importantly, it avoids any modern developments whenever feasible. It wasn’t finished until 2005, but now it is a 444 mile Parkway from Natchez to Nashville. It is designed to minimize any distractions, other than the historic markers and sites along the way, of which there are many. But you won’t see any traffic lights and there are hardly any intersections. In fact, you see hardly any houses, power lines or any other reminders that it’s not 1820 anymore, except the well paved road. Commercial use it not allowed and there are faster roads for people who actually need to go somewhere, so there is very little traffic on the trace and nobody seems to be in a rush. It’s very relaxed driving through a continuous greenway. We enjoyed the uninterrupted, lush green forest, but we met one fellow traveler who was wondering “when the trees mights stop, so that he could see something…”

Joy at one of the Natchez Trace campgrounds

It would be nice just to drive the Natchez Trace Parkway from start to finish, but we did several detours to include some nearby attractions:

• Grand Gulf before the Civil War was a bustling town of over 1,000 people. Hard to imagine that a town of that size can just disappear, but after a yellow fever pandemic, a tornado, an exploding steamboat, erosion from the Mississippi taking 50 blocks of the town downriver and a civil war battle, there is almost nothing left of the town. But they turned it into an interesting state park with a very nice campground, a museum, an observation tower and even a submarine that was used to smuggle liquor during the prohibition. But we will admit, our favorite part was the fresh catfish that our campground neighbors caught and gave to us, so delicious!
  
  

  

  Freshest catfish we ever ate

  
  
• The Windsor Ruins were the perfect ending to our tour of plantation homes. This might have been the fanciest home of them all when it was built. It survived the Civil War, only to burn down by a carelessly discarded cigarette in 1890. The wooden structure burned down, the ornate iron staircases “disappeared”, but the brick columns are still standing today, so the whole scene reminded me very much of the many ruins I have seen in Greece.
  
  

  

  The Windsor Ruins

  
  
• The Vicksburg National Military Park is the site of the famous Civil War battle and the siege. It was a crucial early victory for the Union, splitting the Confederacy in half and giving the Union control of the all important Mississippi River. The successful siege of Vicksburg also catapulted Grant’s career. We spent a whole day on an audio driving tour of the battlefield, visited the memorials and the recovered wreck of the USS Cairo, the only surviving ironclad warship of that time, which was lost in the Mississippi mud for almost a century.
  
  

  

  The ironclad USS Cairo,
  recovered after a century in the Mississippi 

  
  
• But the town of Vicksburg offers a lot more: Similar to Natchez it sits on a natural bluff above the Mississippi…well, actually it sat above the Mississippi: The river has since moved. The Army Corps of Engineers has a very interesting museum in Vicksburg, explaining the history of the Mississippi and the complex flood control levee system. We also visited the place where Coca Cola was first bottled. In 1894 an industrious soda fountain owner bottled the new drink to sell it to his rural customers. At first the Coca Cola did not want to be in the bottling business, they thought soda fountains were the best way to sell their product. I think they changed their mind eventually. Today, they fill about 1.8 billion bottles a day. But our favorite place in Vicksburg was the 10 South rooftop bar, the liveliest place in town, with the best views, enough reasons for us to go there both nights.
  
  

  

  If we had been in Vicksburg for 3 nights,
  we'd probably had gone to this rooftop bar
  a third time

  
  
• The Mississippi River Basin Model once was the largest hydraulic model in the world. It covers 200 acres and was built to better understand the water flow in the Mississippi Basin, especially after the devastating 1927 floods. It’s been abandoned for decades and so overgrown that we did not even see the Rocky Mountains, even though supposedly they are 50 feet tall. It would have been quite the playground for my hydrological brother, even without water. It’s been a very hydraulic week anyway: Lots of rain, a leaking water pump in Joy and several nights of lake front camping.
  
  

  

  Just a tiny part of the huge
  Mississippi River Basin Model

  
  
• Jackson, the capital of Mississippi is a weird place. We liked everything we did here, but we don’t like the city. The State Capitol is very impressive. The Mississippi History Museum, the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and the Mississippi Art Museum were all fascinating, we had a great lunch at the Iron Horse Grill and stayed at the wonderful Le Fleur Bluff State Park just outside of town, but other than that, the town seemed desolate and uninviting. We are not alone with that sentiment: I’ve never been in any state, where people are genuinely proud of their state, but mention so frequently how much they dislike their capital. 
  
  

  

  This capitol is the best part
  of this capital

  
  
• I also figured out how to break 80 in golf: We played a fun 9 hole stick golf course and on the same day also played 9 holes of disc golf. That did more for my score than any lesson or new clubs will ever do.
  
  

  

  The disc & stick golf day 

  
  
• The Ulysses Grant Presidential Library was a very pleasant surprise. Since we never had a president from Mississippi, I would not have expected a Presidential Library here, but since 2008, the Mississippi State University ist home of Grant’s Library and it is very well curated. They say it only makes sense that his library is here: By loosing several battles during the civil war, Mississippi did more to advance Grant’s career than any other state. The museum gave us a new appreciation for Grant and for the South, for honoring the guy who defeated them. We were impressed by the whole MSU campus in Starkville. According to the Census Bureau, the town of Starkville has a population of only 25,387. I assume that does not include the roughly 25,000 students at MSU…
  
  

  

  On the Mississippi State Campus 

We realize how ridiculously lucky we are that we get to take these long road trips and see all these different places. So occasionally, we like to pay it forward. Earlier this week, we helped a stranded veteran with a breakfast and with jumping his car. Then we helped a guy in Jackson who claimed that he was carjacked. To be honest, we have our doubts whether that’s true, so we didn’t give him money. But whatever his situation is, he should not go hungry, so we took him out for lunch, which actually turned out to be very pleasant and very delicious even for us and “one of the best meals ever” for our new ‘friend’.  

Joy's good deed on Memorial Day

Now we are in Tupelo, the birthplace of Elvis and it just happens to be the annual Elvis Festival. So our first big, post-vaccination event will be an Elvis impersonating competition with thousands of socially distanced Elvis fans. But I’ll send this out before we see the show and before we even visited Elvis’s birthplace, maybe one or two of you are curious enough to come back to read all about that in the next blog.

Aloha from Tupelo, Mississippi,

Chris & Sandra