The grass was green, the meadows were full of flowers, and the trees were showing off their new clothes. Mix in a little sunshine and warmth, and it’s a formula for a great trip.Like other National Park parkways, there is no development on the Trace and little to mar its historic ambiance.
We stopped at all the markers and learned about the Mississippian Mound cultures who once lived here.
In the early 1800’s, traders boated their goods down the river and then spent weeks walking back along the trace because their boats couldn’t go upriver. (That stopped once steam paddle boats were invented.)
Most of the stops entailed reading a descriptive plaque. Some had short walks to see the original trace, a cemetery, a natural feature or other point of interest. We got off the parkway and drove several miles to see the Windsor ruins. It had been a palatial antebellum home that survived the Civil War and then was burned down in 1890 because of a careless smoker.
We stayed in Natchez State Park and visited some of the sights in Natchez, which has a number of antebellum homes you can visit and is just a pleasant town to see.After a day in Natchez and a day on the parkway, we deviated west to Vicksburg, whose main claim to fame is Vicksburg Military Park.
The park does a great job interpreting this Civil War battle and is much like Gettysburg, just not as big. At each of the 15 stops along the 17-mile driving tour, there are blue signs explaining where the Union troops were situated and red signs showing where the Confederates were.
There are statues and monuments, an excellent visitor’s center, the partially-reconstructed USS Cairo, (a gunboat that had been sunk in the Yazoo river in 1862 and raised in 1964), and a cemetery where thousands, mostly unnamed, are buried.We listened to the cell phone tour as we drove. My favorite story was at stop #12, where Union soldiers charged a Texan regiment. Thomas Higgins, a color bearer from Illinois, sprinted across a field, bullets whizzing all around him. He scaled the wall of the lunette only to find himself surrounded by Texans. They were amazed at his bravery and luck and shook his hand!
Across the train tracks downtown and beside the river is a line of delightful murals painted on the flood wall. They depict the entire history of the area. We took a quick look at the outside of the old courthouse, now a museum, which survived the Civil War because the confederates kept Union soldiers there so the Union wouldn’t bomb the building. We returned to our campground where, it seemed, all the other RV’ers were walking their dogs. Most have one or two small ones. A few have big dogs.
The following day we drove to Jackson to pick up where we had stopped along the Natchez parkway. A short section of the highway was rough and bumpy. When we got to our campground and opened the door, we found that the pantry door had opened and spilled its contents onto the floor. Cans and bottles must have been pushing against it. What a mess! Streams of oil and vinegar were running across the floor. A big puddle of salsa verde was in the middle of it. Cans were rolling about. Broken glass was everywhere. I started to open the slide, and the wood panel beneath the sofa split because things were jammed behind it. We started to clean up. I was standing at the sink, washing off cans. David was on his hands and knees, picking up bottles and pieces of glass. He put a bottle of vinegar on the floor near me and said it had spilled everywhere.
It was more than half full. I leaned down to pick it up so I wouldn’t knock it over, not realizing that it was broken. When I tried to pick it up, the sharp, jagged top of the narrow-necked bottle came off, and my middle finger was sliced open by the bottom part as it slid out of my hand. I thought I had cut off my finger. I stood holding my finger together and screamed. I kept screaming. David told me to stop screaming and to show him my finger. I stopped screaming but didn’t want to stop pressing the two pieces of my fingers together so that I could keep them aligned and also to stop the bleeding.We wrapped the finger with gauze and electric tape and continued cleaning up. Then we went to Kroger to get some Spic ‘n Span, salsa verde and some better bandages. The baker was putting out some big, beautifully-decorated cakes in a display case. I had never seen such lavishly-decorated cakes in a grocery store. “Did you make these yourself?” I asked him. “Yes, I did” he said. Evidently he used to make wedding cakes. By the time we had lunch and finished cleaning up, it was late, so we went on a 3-mile walk in the park and missed the sights in Jackson.
That evening we changed the bandage and determined that although it was a long, deep gash, my finger was still connected.The next day we continued along the parkway, taking the trailer with us this time. This section of the parkway had more traffic and the parking pull-offs weren’t as accommodating for RVs, but it was still better than having to backtrack. Also it was very hot, and since we had the cats with us, we couldn’t leave them for long at any time.
Mostly the trails were short, and sometimes we just took turns. Many of the stops explained the ecology of the area or the history of the Choctaws and the settlers. That night David wanted to stay at WalMart so we could run our noisy generator but the closest one was 20 miles away, so instead, we stayed at the free parkway campground. It’s April 9th and unseasonably hot (over 90) and humid. The small campground was full, but we found a spot in the picnic area and spent a hot night with no a/c.
On our third day on the parkway, we continued on to Tupelo. It was just as scenic but not as flat. We got off a couple times. Once to see some Indian mounds managed by Tombigbee National Forest and another to see the Tupelo National Battlefield. It was a shock to get off the parkway in Tupelo and find ourselves on a busy road lined with strip malls and loud traffic.
The site of the battlefield was a patch of grass on a busy corner and had two canons, a couple small monuments and a sign explaining the battle.
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