Natchez Trace

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We spent a leisurely morning and left the RV park around 11:00. Jodie and Nancy spent a half hour on the phone going over the mail. We saw our first dead armadillo by the roadside. Will we ever see a live one? A highway sign for an upcoming rest area said, "Security Provided". We decided we didn't need to stop.We passed through Jackson, the state capital. According to the guidebook, it was nicknamed Chimneyville, after Sherman burned the town in July, 1863. There were beautiful, new interchanges in Jackson, but the highway was old, rough, and bouncy. We were sure everything in the trailer would have fallen out of the cupboards and be all jumbled up on the floor. Shortly after Jackson, we got onto the Natchez Trace Parkway. We just happened to have brought along a Smithsonian Magazine because it had a couple of articles about places we were going to be - Maine, Natchez Trace, New Mexico. Of course we had heard of the Natchez Trace, but we didn't know very much about it. Here's the scoop. The Old Natchez Trace began as a Native American trail between the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations. Then, 200 years ago, boats and barges began to deliver goods down the Mississippe to Natchez. After off-loading their cargo, the boatmen sold their boats and barges for lumber and WALKED back to Kentucky and Tennessee. President Thomas Jefferson ordered a route to be built 450 miles from Natchez, MS to Nashville, TN. The boatmen could walk home in three to four weeks and post riders could carry mail in about two weeks. A trace was a forest path. Jefferson wanted it widened. The route crossed rivers, streams, swamps, ridges, and wound through dense forests. There were about 20 inns along the route. A larger, more direct road was built in 1817 and then the riverboats took over. They could return UP the Mississippi in 15 days, so the Trace wasn't needed. Rich wondered again how anyone could find their way through forests like these. He wondered how many people set off through the woods and were never heard from again! It has been said that the forests were so thick then, that a squirrel could start in Maine and end up In Mississippi without ever touching the ground! We stopped at a historical marker called Dean's Stand and had lunch in the camper. A "stand" was one of the inns along the route. Dean's was a farm and it doubled as lodgings for people traveling on the Trace. The only thing left of their place was the family cemetery. You could see the route of the Trace through the woods there. We began to see vegetation changes - palmetto in the woods and Spanish moss. In the guidebook, it explains about Spanish moss. "It's not Spanish and it's not moss; it is uniquely American and related to the pineapple...It is not a parasite, but an epiphyte, a type pf plant that has no roots and lives off moisture in the atmosphere....the plants are nourished by mineral-rich cells that wash off the host tree." Driving down the two lane parkway with hardly any traffic was a tranquil Sunday drive. Rich said, "The pines and the hardwoods hold hands like lovers in the park." Did I say that the Natchez Trace Parkway is part of the National Park Service? We saw magnolias out in the woods. Do they grow wild here? In the afternoon, we found Natchez State Park with camping by a lake. It was very nice with hardly any other campers, and very quiet. Luckily, nothing fell on the floor in the trailetr from the bunpy roads. Three hungry stray cats were hanging around looking and sounding pitiful so we fed them -one tan, one black, and one gray. The tan one was quite friendly and followed us around outside, rubbing against our legs. We played several games of backgammon. Then Nancy wrote some blogs on Microsoft Word to save for the next time we have Wi-Fi.
We slept in the peaceful woods, glad that we don't have it as tough as people in the olden days.

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Photos

Sunken Trace
We walked down in the Trace.

Comments

[Don]

Told Ya So
Told ya it'd be a pleasant ride and camp