The state park we are in is part of the Mississippi State Park system and is a very nice campground. The sites are all fairly large with concrete pads and asphalt drives, 50 amp electric and water. There are no sewer connections, but there is a dump station at the entrance to the campground so we can dump the tanks on the way out. It is very woodsy and on the first night we saw an armadillo wandering around the campground not too far from our site.
Wednesday, July 11th, Happy 7-11 day! We learned that today is the 85th anniversary of the 7-11 convenience chain as well as some anniversary of the Slurpee, a big staple at the 7-11. As a result, all 7-11 stores are giving away free Slurpees. Yea! Oops, no 7-11s in this area. Rats. We left the coach with the Babcocks about 10:00 to go out for some sightseeing and hopefully some caching. The rain, however, does not seem to be letting up and the forecast has thunderstorms predicted for the next four or five days, so we may not get too much caching done.
Natchez was founded by French Colonists in 1716 and was built on a 200 foot bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, thereby ensuring it would be safe from any possible flooding of the river. By the mid-1800s it is said that there were 25 millionaires in the United States and 11 of them lived in Natchez. It was an area of huge homes, lush plantations and was a center of commerce along the river. Today the city has about 23,000 population and is primarily a tourist destination. Natchez was the capital of the Mississippi Territory and was the first capital of the State of Mississippi. The capital was moved to Jackson in 1822.
About noon we decided to stop at a large Mexican restaurant called La Fiesta that we found on one of the main streets. There were a lot of cars in the lot, so we figured it must be popular. It was a very big place with a fairly typical Mexican fare menu. I had a combo with a chili reallno, a burro and a taco. It was mediocre food at best. It didn’t taste bad, it just didn’t taste anywhere near authentic. The burro and taco were ground beef, which you only get in cheap restaurants in the southwest. The chili reallno was bland and the cheese oily. Not the best we have had. Jackie had fajitas, which she said were pretty good, but there you have real chunks of grilled chicken, so it’s not surprising that it tasted better.
After lunch we drove around a little more in the rain, looking at local sights, but not getting out of the car for anything. Finally, about 2:00 we headed back to the campground so the Babcocks could walk the dog. We got together for cocktails later in the afternoon with Ray and Suzie, but none of us wanted any dinner, so after they left we just relaxed and watched TV the rest of the night while listening to the rain.
Thursday, July 12th, we remember Joe Rielly, a good friend that passed away six years ago today. Joe was married to one of Jackie’s closest friends, Helen, and they lived in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. We just happened to be back there in 2006 visiting during our first full year on the road. Jackie and I were with Helen on a day trip to Lake George in upstate New York when she got the news that Joe had been found dead of a heart attack at their house. Very tragic day.I got up and left the coach very early, about 7:30, and took the Jeep down to the local Jeep dealer for a service. Because our Jeep is a diesel, with a Mercedes engine, I always take it to the dealer for service. It was overdue, but only by a few hundred miles. They got the car right into the service bay, but it still took over four hours to get the oil change, lube and fuel filter changed. The fuel filter was the big holdup. It is located in a spot where they have to let the engine cool down almost completely before they can work on it. They finally got done a little after noon and I drove back to the campground. The rest of our group was having a leisure/chores day and when I came in Jackie and Suzie were working on new seat covers for the front two chairs in the coach. The leather gets kind of sticky in the summer and irritates my skin, so we got some fleece material to make covers.
I spent some time working on the blog and doing other chores and we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing. The Babcocks came over for happy hour and then we had dinner together with a chicken dish that Jackie had made. We chatted for a while after dinner before the Babcocks went back to their coach and we watched TV until bedtime.
Friday, July 13th, EEK! Oh, what the heck, we’re not afraid. We woke up with rain - again. We left the coach after lunch to just go out and do some more driving around sightseeing. We are kind of running out of things to drive by and look at, but there were a couple of places we hadn’t been yet. Even though it was raining off and on we did stop near the old downtown part of Natchez to capture one geocache. We hadn’t gotten any in Natchez yet and couldn’t leave town without at least one. Right next to where the cache was hidden was one of the places we wanted to visit, a gift shop called The Old South Trading Post. It is really just a small, but cram-packed gift shop in the restored train station, but it is listed in most of the material about Natchez as a “must see” place. We looked around for a while and I bought a tee shirt.
After that stop we drove around for a couple hours, checked to see if the Elks Lodge was open, which it wasn’t, and looked for anything interesting we might have missed in our previous explorations. We had found the Elks lodge a few days ago, but it was closed and there was no sign on the door indicating when it was open. The building was being maintained, there was a new flag flying and the swimming pool looked like it was being taken care of. All this indicated that the lodge was still in business, but they don’t answer the phone and they have no answering machine. This time we drove by there was someone swimming in the pool with his kids. He was a member and it turns out that the lodge is not open for regular hours. They only open for meetings and special events. He did invite us to a BBQ at the lodge next week, but we will be long gone by then. I guess no lodge pin from Natchez Lodge 533.
After a while we headed back to the campground so Ray could walk the dog. We had cocktails and discussed where we might want to go for dinner. We were reading a bunch of stuff we picked up from the visitor’s center and finally settled on a place called Lil Dagos, an Italian place, but one which had muffelletas on the menu. Ray had loved the one he had in Louisiana and we had not been seeing them on menus around these parts so we thought they might be strictly a New Orleans type thing. When we drove to the restaurant we found a fairly small strip mall restaurant, but the service was great and the food was outstanding. Both Ray and I ordered a full sandwich so we could eat half, which is a full meal, and take the other half home for another day. Jackie had a chicken and eggplant Parmesan dish and said it was wonderful. Our muffelletas where as good as the ones in Louisiana, and Suzie had a shrimp fettuccini that had a wonderful cream sauce. We all took leftovers out and all enjoyed the meal very much. I can highly recommend Lil Dagos Italian Restaurant on Highway 435 in Natchez, Mississippi. After dinner we went back to the campground and just relaxed the rest of the night.
Saturday, July 14th, our last full day in Natchez. We actually woke up to sunny skies for the first time since we arrived. I used the good weather to finish taking the smashed satellite dome off of the roof of the coach and took down the shade screens while they were dry. It was nice to be able to do some things outside around the coach without getting wet.
We decided to leave the campground early, about 11:00, and do lunch at another of the “must see” places in town. This one was a small restaurant called Mammy’s Cupboard, located on Highway 61, about five miles south of town. The place was built in 1940 as a diner and is basically a 28 foot tall character built to resemble the “Aunt Jemima” character. However, Jackie thought she looked more Chinese than Black. The restaurant is under her skirt. You really have to look at the picture to get a feel for the place. A lot of roadside stops were built in the 40's and 50's to resemble things like tee pees, airplanes, barrels, etc., and this was one of those types of buildings. The history of the place is that over the years it was used for various purposes, including a gas station, a gift shop, and more recently a restaurant, what it was originally built for. The new owners have refurbished the exterior with new paint and repairs, and cleaned up the small interior. The place is only open about three hours a day for lunch and has a very limited menu because of the very small kitchen facilities. They have one hot lunch special, a different one each day of the week, and about ten sandwich choices. Ray and I had the Reuben, which was quite good. The girls had chicken salad sandwiches, which they said were a little dry and tasteless. The little lump of potato salad that came with the meal was also very dry. The homemade cup of vegetable beef soup was excellent. I would only rate the food fair, the service good and the atmosphere interesting. It’s one of those “got to be there once” kind of places.
After our lunch we decided to drive north of Natchez and visit a couple of the smaller towns up that way. We stopped first in Lafayette, Mississippi, which is about 18 miles north on Highway 61 and drove around for a little while. We then continued another 20 miles to Port Gibson, Mississippi. Port Gibson had a little more history and is considered the third oldest European settlement in the U.S., founded by the French in 1729. It’s a small place, only about 1,600 population. We drove around it for a little while and then drove on back to the campground. After happy hour with the Babcocks we went back to our coach and had left overs for dinner. We then just watched TV the rest of the night.
Sunday, July 15th, another travel day. We left the campground about 10:00 and started our travel north to our next stop, Jackson, Mississippi. This is where we start our travel on the Natchez Trace with the motorhomes. We had driven the first eight miles of the Trace, which starts in Natchez, with the car during some of our exploration of the area. We got on with the motor homes at MP 8 and started north. Our goal is to drive all 444 miles of the trace to where it ends near Nashville, Tennessee. The Natchez Trace, also known as the "Old Natchez Trace", is a historical path that links the Cumberland, Tennessee and Mississippi rivers. It was created and used for centuries by Native Americans, and was later used by early European and American explorers, traders and emigrants in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Today, the trail is commemorated by the 444 mile Natchez Trace Parkway, which follows the approximate path of the Trace, and is a National Historical Parkway maintained by the U.S. Park Service. 
Once we got the coaches set up and ready for our five night stay here we got in the car to go get a couple of geocaches. We needed a cache on this date for our days of the year challenge, and there were several just outside of the entrance to the park. We actually managed to five new finds in less than an hour. After caching we went back to the campground and had happy hour with the Babcocks. After happy hour we went back to our own coach for dinner and relaxation for the rest of the night.
Monday, July 16th, we needed to have a laundry day. The Babcock’s needed to do laundry also, so we packed up all of our stuff in their car and the four of us left about 10:00 or so and went into town to a laundromat. We played some cards while the clothes washed and dried, then went out for some lunch. Jackson is the capital of Mississippi and we are very close to the capital building and the state offices, so there were several restaurants in the immediate area. We settled on a place called Keiser’s, which was actually a Greek restaurant. The place was very crowded, but we got a seat right away and we all had pita sandwiches of one sort or another. Ray and Jackie had traditional gyros, I had a beef and cheese and Suzie had turkey. Mine was excellent, everyone else said it tasted OK, but was a little dry. Not the best Greek we have had, but decent. After lunch we went back to the campground and unloaded the laundry and Ray walked the dog.
Our original plan was to go out and explore some more but unfortunately Ray got a phone call while we were in the laundry that their house back in California had been burglarized for the second time in two weeks. Last time they took a couple of TVs and some jewelry and other small valuables and tried unsuccessfully to break into his gun safe. This time they broke in and just took the gun safe with them. Sadly, Ray and Suzie had to spend the afternoon on the phone, talking to their kids, the police, neighbors and the insurance company, so we didn’t get out again. We spent the afternoon just relaxing. We had cocktails with the Babcocks at happy hour then dinner on our own again.
Tuesday, July 17th, we woke up to the second bright sunny day in a row! Yea, no rain, although it is still in the forecast. I was glad to see the sun because we were scheduled to have a glass company come out and replace our broken windshield today. The glass company got to the campground at about 9:00 and in less than two hours we had a nice new non-cracked windshield. Yea! We ate lunch in the coach and about noon the four of us got into our car for some exploring.
A few miles beyond the north end of the lake we came to a section of very impressive cypress swamp which was very picturesque in it’s own way. We finally got off the Parkway at about milepost 135, so we covered about 35 miles in our travels. We got back on the regular roads and checked out a couple of towns in the area northeast of Jackson. One was Carthage, which was nothing special, just a nice little farming community. We did find a geocache there, so we got one find for the day. We saw a Walmart and our experience has been that there is almost always a geocache in a Walmart parking lot. We checked on Jackie’s smart phone and sure enough, there was a cache.After Carthage we drove southwest back towards Jackson and drove through the City of Canton. Canton was a larger town, about 13,000 population, and it has the distinction of having most of the buildings in the center of town, around the town square, on the National Register of Historic Buildings. Looking at the town square takes one back a hundred years. All of the buildings are beautifully restored and very authentically old looking. There have been dozens of movies filmed in Canton just because of the old fashioned look of the town square. They even have a movie museum with memorabilia from some of the movies made there. We were there late, so we couldn’t get into the museum. They also have an Elks Lodge there, but it too was closed and later research showed is was never open for regular hours, just for meetings.
After looking around Canton we continued south back to Jackson and the campground. We let Ray walk the dog and rest for a half hour or so and then we were back in the car headed out to dinner. We decided on Chinese, but didn’t want a buffet. There was a place very nearby called Mr. Chen’s Oriental Supermarket and Restaurant, a very clumsy name, but the place had almost universal excellent ratings on Yelp. We decided to try it and were not disappointed. It was some of the finest Chinese food I have had. We ordered way too much food, each of us had a different entree, we had fried rice, egg rolls and soup as well. We ended up taking as much home for another dinner as we ate in the restaurant. The menu was huge and very authentic, there we some dishes on the menu I had never seen before at any restaurant.
After dinner we spent a while walking through the very large Oriental supermarket and again were surprised at the variety of Asian food items for sale. This was a very impressive place and I can highly recommend it for anyone who finds themselves in need of Asian food, either prepared or not, while in Jackson, Mississippi. It is on the west frontage road of I-55, near exit 103. Excellent choice for lunch, dinner or just shopping for ingredients for your own meal. After Mr. Chen’s we went back to the campground where we relaxed the rest of the evening.
Wednesday, July 18th, the four of us left the campground, with Ray driving today, about 10:00 for a day trip to Vicksburg, Mississippi, a city on the Mississippi river about 45 miles west of Jackson. It took about an hour or so to get to Vicksburg because of road construction and traffic. Our first stop in Vicksburg was at the Vicksburg National Military Park. Vicksburg was the site of a crucial series of battles during the Civil War. The siege of Vicksburg occurred in the summer of 1863 with the city falling to the attacking Union forces on July 4th, 1863. Most historians cite this week as the turning point in the war with the advantage moving to the Union. The day before General Lee’s Confederate forces were turned back at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, thus halting the northern thrust of the Confederacy. The loss of Vicksburg the next day finalized total Union control of the Mississippi River, thus effectively cutting the Confederacy in half. It because very difficult for the Confederate forces to support their efforts in Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Missouri and other areas west of the river.
We toured the visitor’s center at the park and then took about two hours or so to drive the 16 mile interior tour road. The park covers over 1,800 acres along the east boundary of Vicksburg and includes 1,325 historic monuments and markers, 20 miles of historic trenches and earthworks, 12.5-mile walking trail, two antebellum homes, 144 emplaced cannons, the partially restored remains of the gunboat USS Cairo which was sunk on December 12, 1862, on the Yazoo River by , Confederate artillery fire. The ship was recovered from the silt of the river in 1964. The Cairo, also known as the "Hardluck Ironclad," was the first U.S. ship in history to be sunk by a torpedo/mine. The Vicksburg National Cemetery is also on the grounds of the park. During our tour we also gathered information to give us credit for finding a virtual geocache. We needed to log a cache for this date for our days of the year challenge and the only caches allowed in National parks are victuals. We had to find four different sites along the tour road and get information from the monuments we found there.
After our tour of the National Park we drove around Vicksburg a little while and then went to one of the casinos that are along the Mississippi. In Mississippi casinos are allowed, but they must be floating on water, so the only place you find them are along rivers and along the Gulf Coast in Biloxi. They build them on barges, sometimes disguised as river boats, sometimes just square buildings on a big barge. The one we went to, Diamond Jack’s, was one of those that just looked like a building sitting on the edge of the river. We had a quick lunch at the deli in the casino and then gamed for about 45 minutes. We were pressed for time because the tour of the battlefield park had taken longer than we expected and the Babcocks had to get back to the campground because of the dog. We finally got back to the campground about 4:00 and relaxed for a while before getting together with the Babcocks for happy hour and dinner. Ray heated up the leftovers from our Chinese meal the night before and it was just as good as the first time. There was more than enough for a full meal for all of us. About 7:00 we got our first taste of rain since the afternoon of our arrival here in Jackson. We had almost three full days of sunshine and nice weather. The rain tonight was heavy at times, with lots of thunder, but no wind or hail. The weather alert radio did go off with a flash flood warning for the area, but it passed about an hour later with no issues. We went back to our coach about 7:30 and relaxed the rest of the night.
Thursday, July 19th, our last day in Jackson. We left the coach in our car about 11:00 and headed out to Arby’s for lunch. Ray and I both have been wanting Arby’s and there were none in Natchez or Abita Springs. We had lunch and then the both of us bought a bunch of extra sandwiches to put in the freezer for future lunches. They freeze really good, a trick I learned years ago when we were traveling for a while with some other old friends, Marianne and David Conner. David, who died several years ago, loved Arby’s and told me about freezing them.
After lunch we did some geocaching around the central Jackson area. We found six new caches, with no DNFs, although there were a couple that we went to and decided not to even try to look for because they were out in the brush and poison ivy. We then noticed that the sky was starting to look really dark and threatening and we still needed to make a quick stop at Walmart before going home. We got into Walmart, got our shopping done and were just pulling out of the parking lot when the sky opened up, the thunder and lightening started, and we had one big storm going on. It rained on and off for a couple hours with the rain coming down as hard as I have ever seen it, kind of like when were in Abita Springs a couple weeks ago. There was so much lightening around that we didn’t even unload the car when we got home. We waited until the worst of the storm had passed before we took out the groceries. We had cocktails and dinner at the Babcock’s coach. He made taco salad, which is one of his specialties and is always great. After dinner we went back to our coach and relaxed the rest of the night.Friday, July 20th, another travel day on the Natchez Trace. We got on the trace at MP 101 and headed northeast for Tupelo, Mississippi, about 180 miles away. We did 159 miles of the Trace Parkway, getting off at MP 160 just outside of Tupelo. We made a couple of stops along the way, but this stretch really didn’t have much to see in the way of historical sights. Lots of places where things had happened in the past, but there was nothing physical to look at so we just read about the stuff in the guidebook. It sure is peaceful and easy driving on the Trace, no traffic, no trucks, just lots of green and trees.
Our final destination for the day is Trace State Park, another of the Mississippi State Parks. Like the last one, Trace State Park is built around a lake, but this one is very large. They have several campgrounds and we are a spot that is right on the edge of the lake. We also have full hookups, meaning we have sewer. This is the first time in nearly three weeks that we have had sewer at our site. Yea, long showers again! We got set up pretty quick, although it was very hot and humid. We had made our reservations about four months ago, so we had a really nice site. The Babcocks didn’t make theirs until about six weeks ago and the site they ended up with was really unuseable for their coach. It was a double site, meaning two sites side by side on the same driveway. It was way too narrow for their big coach, which is like ours, 40 feet with four slides. They thought they were going have to go to the other campground on the other side of the park because all of the sites in this campground were booked for the weekend.Then, just as they were getting ready to leave to go find a spot elsewhere a lady came over from the campsite across the road and asked what the problem was. When we explained the Babcock’s issue, she told us that she had rented the site right across from us, which was a large pull through, but had decided to just bunk with her cousin and not bother to bring her trailer in for the weekend. She told the Babcocks they were welcome to use it instead of the one they had booked. Everything worked out perfect and now the Babcocks have a nice site too. The South really is full of nice people.
After we got set up we just stayed in and relaxed for the rest of the night. I was hot and tired and didn’t feel like company. We watched TV and chilled all evening. We will be here for five days, so there is plenty of time to visit and see the sights.
Saturday, July 21st, we left the campground in our car for a day of exploration around Tupelo. Of course our first stop had to be Elvis Presley Memorial Park, the birthplace of the King of Rock and roll! In 2006, our first full year on the road, we went through Memphis and visited Graceland, the home where Elvis died in 1977 and where he is buried. Now we have the chance to see where he was born in 1935. The little shotgun shack that his father Vernon built in 1934 for $180 is the original building in it’s original location. None of the furnishings in the house are original because the Presley’s moved a couple of years later to a neighboring house. The city of Tupelo bought the house and the surrounding property in 1957 after Elvis became famous. Some of the funds for the project were donated by Elvis and were proceeds from his 1956 “homecoming” concert at the Lee County Fairgrounds in Tupelo.
Other interesting historical facts I discovered about Tupelo are that George Kelly Barnes, the famous gangster and bank robber known as “Machine Gun Kelly” did his last known bank robbery in Tupelo on November 30, 1932. In April 1936 the city was hit with an EF5 tornado that wiped out a neighborhood and killed more than 216 people.After our tour of the Elvis museum we stopped for lunch at a very nice place called simply The Grill. The food was OK in that Jackie’s fish tacos were very good and my Philly cheese steak was not so good. Great meat, but very little cheese and no peppers or onions. Not a very authentic Philly. Ray and Suzie split a shrimp po boy which they said was tasty, but it was not very big. I probably wouldn’t go back to the place again.
Once we were done caching we made a quick stop at Wally World and then went back to the campground. We got together with the Babcocks for happy hour and then the four of us BBQed some steaks and had dinner together in their coach. After dinner we went back to our place and relaxed the rest of the night.
Sunday, July 22nd. Happy Birthday to my daughter Tracie and my great granddaughter Kirsten. Kirsten, who is my daughter Tye’s grandchild, was my first great grand! Yikes! About 10:00 the four of us climbed into Ray’s car for a day of further exploration of northeast Mississippi. However, when Ray turned the key nothing happened. Oopsie. After some discussion Ray decided that his five year battery was close to seven years old and he probably needed a new one. I brought our car over and we jumped Ray’s, which started right up and ran fine. We drove to an auto parts store in Tupelo where Ray had a new battery installed and we were off to exploring having only lost about a half hour.
Along the way we stopped at a truck stop for a potty break and I noticed that there was a geocache in the parking lot of the truck stop. After the potty stop we found and logged the cache. We then continued on to Columbus AFB, which is actually about six miles north of the City of Columbus. We got on base and drove around for a while with Ray trying to find anything that looked familiar after forty-some years. He didn’t and I wasn’t surprised since almost every building on the base looked fairly new except for a couple of the hangers along the flight line. Over the past 25 years the military has closed about two thirds of the military bases in the United States in an effort to consolidate and save money. Those bases that didn’t close were enhanced and greatly improved as the government spent a lot of money on them. We did stop at the base exchange where we shopped for a little while, but didn’t buy much. Ray also stopped at the base fire station and visited with the current crew a little. He wanted to get a tee shirt, but they didn’t have any available.
After spending an hour or so on the base we left and drove down into the City of Columbus. We stopped at an Applebee’s Restaurant for lunch and, although the food was OK, the service was abysmal. They were slow, uncaring, inattentive and just generally bad. Ray ordered a dish that was supposed to have shrimp on it and it came with none. I ordered French onion soup and it was cold. The reason the waitress gave was “we don’t do lunch on the weekends.” Wait, what? The menu doesn’t say soup only for lunch on weekdays, it offers soup, period. Although Applebee’s is one of our favorite chain restaurants, I would steer clear of the one in Columbus, Mississippi.
After lunch we tried to get a geocache that was located near one of the town’s many antebellum mansions, but we couldn’t find it. Had to log another DNF. We then decided to stop caching since it was the middle of the afternoon and Ray had another couple of nearby towns he wanted to drive through before we started back towards home. Columbus, which is a city of about 25,000 people, was the birthplace of playwright Tennessee Williams, and, in addition to the Air Force base, is home to several large industries, including the Eurocopter helicopter manufacturing facility.
We left Columbus and drove west about twenty miles to the town of Starkville. Starkville also has a population of around 25,000, but is a little more affluent city and is the home of Mississippi State University. We drove around downtown, which was very picturesque, for a while, but didn’t make any stops. We then headed for the last town Ray wanted to visit, the City of West Point, Mississippi, not New York, and not the home of the Military Academy. West Point, Mississippi has about 11,000 people and driving around the downtown shows evidence of serious decline. I couldn’t find much of interest in either the history or the current state of the town in my research.After looking around the three cities that Ray remembered from his time in the area in the sixties Ray decided things had changed. Ya think? I remember having the same thoughts the first time I visited Memphis, where I was stationed in the 60's. Didn’t recognize much of anything. We left West Point and headed back to Trace State Park and the campground. On the way we drove through Pontotoc, the small town just west of the campground. Pontotoc is very small and also didn’t appear to have too much going for it any more.
After we got back to the campground Ray and I made cocktails and sat outside under the shade of a big oak tree for about an hour watching the boats on the lake. This was the first evening since we got here where the heat and humidity were low enough to make it comfortable to sit outside. The campground, which was packed full over the weekend, is now nearly empty and very quite. After cocktail hour we went to our own coaches and relaxed the rest of the night after a very busy and interesting day.
Monday, July 23rd, we woke up to blue skies and a weather forecast with no predicted chance of rain, the first of those in a couple weeks. The four of us left the coach after lunch, about 12:30 or so, to go out and do some exploring and geocaching in the Tupelo area again. We did four caches fairly close to the campground first, finding three of them but having to DNF the fourth. We then took a break from caching to visit the Natchez Trace National Parkway Visitor’s Center.
Although the Trace is 444 miles long, there is only one official National Park Service visitor’s center and it is located just outside Tupelo at milepost 266. This is a little over half way between Natchez and Nashville. The center has lots of nice displays outlining the history of the trace from pre-European times through the modern improvements and creation of the National Parkway. We spent about a half hour in the center looking at the exhibits and going through the gift shop. Ray and I each got a very nice Natchez Trace tee shirt for our collections. After the visitor’s center we stopped at a couple of the Parkway turnouts near Tupelo, including the Chickasaw Village, the site of an old Indian town. There were no actual ruins or remains, but the Park Service did have several exhibits set up and had made outlines on the ground indicating where some of the more important structures might be. We only explored the six miles or so of Trace between where we got off at MP 260 and the Visitor’s Center at MP 266.
After caching we drove back to the campground and relaxed for a while. We got together for happy hour with the Babcocks and then they had dinner in our coach with us. Jackie made her Chili Reallno casserole, which was very good. After we chatted for a while the Babcocks left and we watched TV the rest of the evening.
Tuesday, July 25th, Jackie’s brother Dennis’ birthday. Happy Birthday Bro! The four of us decided we needed a day off, so we took one. I took care of a few small chores around the coach, as did Jackie. She finished the seat cover for my coach driver’s seat. We have the pretend leather seats and when it gets warm it irritates my skin. She bought some nice grey fleece fabric and, with the help of Suzie who had made some for their coach, fixed up my seat. We did get together with the Babcocks for cocktails, but we had dinner on our own and just relaxed most of the day and evening.
Wednesday, July 26th, another travel day on the Natchez Trace Parkway. We got everything packed up and pulled out of the campground around 9:30. We made a quick stop for fuel on the highway between the campground and the Trace, but I think the owner saw us coming. We went back and forth between town and the campground past this station every day except yesterday. The price of diesel was $3.37, which was a good price. When we pulled in with the motorhomes today it had gone up to $3.69! That is a difference of almost $18 on the 55 gallons I put in the coach. Rats!
After our fuel stop we got on the trace at MP 260 where we got off with the coaches five days ago. We continued north, headed for an RV park near the town of Hohenwald, Tennessee, about 140 miles. We made a couple of stops along the trace, including a really pretty little place called Cave Spring and another with some Indian mounds. We also stopped at one picnic area for lunch. We also stopped at a place where there were thirteen unknown Confederate soldiers buried. No one is sure how they died, whether from wounds of battle or disease. They were just buried beside the old trace pathway and the graves have been preserved by the National Park Service. Each grave has an American and a Confederate flag. Today’s part of our travels on the trace took us northeast along the last 50 miles of the Trace in Mississippi, through about 30 miles of Alabama and on into Tennessee. We exited the Trace at MP 270, so we did 110 miles of the Trace today. We got to our destination, the Natchez Trace Wilderness Preserve RV Park about 2:30. This park is both a Thousand Trails membership resort and a KOA public park. It is very large and the two companies have separate camping areas inside the park. We are here under Thousand Trails and were fortunate to find two full hookup sites right next to each other. We only have 30 amp power and with the heat that is going to be a bit inconvenient, but we will get by for five days.
We got parked and settled in and relaxed until about 6:00 when we drove into the closest town, Hohenwald, Tennessee, for dinner. Although the closest, Hohenwald is still about 15 miles from the campground. We found a Chinese buffet that was open and had dinner there. The food was fair and the service poor, but it was inexpensive and filling. The name of the place was Rong Garden and it would Rong of me to recommend it to anyone. After dinner we drove back to the campground and crashed for the rest of the night.
Our arrival here in Tennessee makes a good stopping place for this chapter of the blog. We will be here five days before finishing the last 77 miles of the Trace and heading into Nashville, Tennessee for a week long stay. My closing words of wisdom will be from the fortune I found in last night’s fortune cookie - “Life to you is a dashing and bold adventure.” Live everyday like the adventure it is. Bye for now.
