A Full-time Life

A few more things about MISSISSIPPI

 

At the Natchez Visitor Center we watched filmed interviews of some lifelong residents of the area.  One lady said she loved living here where she could look every day at the Mississippi River.  And, she said, think about how boats could go North on it all the way to Minnesota and South -- all the way around the whole world. 

We loved looking out our window at the River too (for the few days we "lived" across from Natchez).  But I don't think we could spend too many months with that view before we would yearn to do those trips ourselves.  We're just hobos at heart.

This is a picture of Kudzu "the plant that ate the South".  Years ago, the vine was imported from Japan as an erosion-control measure and farmers were paid to plant it.  But the Southeastern US has the perfect conditions to allow kudzu to grow out of control-- hot, humid summers, frequent rain, mild winter temperatures with few freezes and no natural predators.  So now it is a pest weed.  A sign by a patch of it on the Natchez Visitor Center grounds said that kudzu will wrap itself around poles, other plants, buildings, even you if you stand still long enough. 

So don't forget to keep moving when you're in the Southeast!

ROAD TRIP 2008, Part 3: Arkansas, Mississippi

We saw a lot of new country on this leg of our journey, but Arkansas was our first completely new state.  We had never before set foot or wheel in it.  We crossed into the state almost as soon as we left Branson; it was 250 miles to Hot Springs and it was a beautiful drive.

We stayed at J&J RV Park , where we were parked looking at a lovely little creek.  This was a friendly, quiet place very close to downtown (and the National Park).  A nice amenity was two (count 'em) two  different newspaper boxes.  We hadn't been anyplace where we could buy a daily paper for days and days. It was especially good timing because we arrived on November 5 and were able to see the historic election day headlines.  I know the newspaper business is fading fast, but Internet and 24/7 cable news coverage notwithstanding, it would have been just wrong not to have seen this historic election day coverage in print.

We liked the Hot Springs area a lot.  Our original plan had been to spend a couple of days here so we could visit the National Park (just scroll down a little bit to see our post on it).  We ended up staying a week.  One of the joys of RVing is sometimes being able to do that when a spot unexpectedly catches your fancy.   Here are a couple more places we visited while we stayed here. 

Crater of Diamonds State Park in nearby Murfreesboro is the only place in this country where diamonds can be found.    There's about 40 acres of plowed field where for a small fee you can prospect as much as you want to and keep whatever you find.  Diamonds and other gems have been discovered and the most perfect diamond in the world was found here a few years ago.  We didn't find anything -- we didn't really look very seriously -- but it was a good excuse to play in the dirt on a sunny afternoon.  (We learned later that the best time to find diamonds is immediately after a rainstorm.  People who are serious about their prospecting drop everything to arrive then because the rain washes up the stones.)   Check out their website by clicking right there on the blue; it really is very well done.  

Little Rock, the State Capitol, was just an hour away.  We toured the President Clinton Library and Museum there.  There's a lot of stuff packed into this building.  Those boxes that form the walls are full of schedules and letters that you can take out and read.    The other picture is a replica of the oval office.   

The Presidential Museums do provide a good overview of a particular era in history.  On an earlier trip, we visited the Truman Library in Independence MO and I think we got more out of it.  Maybe this one is just a little too close to the present to be fully appreciated.  But one display here pointed out that the Federal budget was balanced and the country was at peace at the end of President Clinton's term.  What you heard everybody say as they viewed that was "what a difference eight years had made."

Arkansas definitely goes on our "hope we get to come back" list.  We really enjoyed our week in Hot Springs and could easily spend more time there -- and there is a lot more of the state to see as well.

The day we left Hot Springs we stayed overnight in Vicksburg, Mississippi.  No  beautiful view for the first time in two weeks; we stayed at Ameristar Casino RV Park.  We paid more here than we had per night in the last two places (where we had those great views) so it wasn't a huge bargain.  But we did get a coupon for a pretty good free breakfast at the Casino hotel the next morning. 

Our next stop was not exactly in Mississippi but it was all about it.  Scroll down to the post "Miss Lou."  I don't know if this is true everywhere, but a hundred years ago or so back in the Northwest I learned how to spell the name of this state this way:  M straight letter crooked letter crooked letter, straight letter, etc etc.  Staying here I learned that it would be a lot easier if we spelled it like people pronounce it, which is more like this:  Mizzippi.    It sounds good that way and it would be a lot easier on 4th graders if they could spell it like it is supposed to sound.

MISS LOU, 2008

When we left Hot Springs this Fall, our next destination was Mississippi, which, like Arkansas, would be a new state for us.   (We had taken a side trip into the state in 2004, but this would be the first time we'd had the RV there.)  We planned to stay in Natchez, but it turned out that our RV Park was in Vidalia, Louisiana, just across the Mississippi River.  (We did actually stay a couple of nights in Mississippi, on the way to Natchez/Vidalia and after our stay there.)  This barge is going right past our Vidalia front door -- looking across to Natchez.  The whole area around Natchez-Vidalia is called "Miss Lou", which sounds to me like it should be the name of somebody's sweet Southern Aunt.  Half of the businesses in and near the two towns are called Miss Lou something or other.  

The main reason we wanted to stay in Natchez was to explore part of The Natchez Trace Parkway.  The Trace is a living monument to the history of people on the move.   It is built along what were paths for Choctaw Indians that eventually came to form a trail from the Mississippi River into the valley of Tennessee.

Around 1780, farmers found they could build boats and float their crops and products downriver to the good markets of Natchez or New Orleans.   Then, instead of taking the empty flatboat back up the River, they would sell it as lumber.  But then they would have to hike back home.  So they used the Indian paths and with frequent use, the paths eventually evolved into the Trace (trail).  The picture above was taken from the bottom of the trace--in places it was worn into an eight to ten foot deep "ditch."

This is Mount Locust, one of the oldest structures still standing on the Trace.   Built as a family plantation, it was one of the first to open its doors to travelers.  Food and accomodations for the night cost about 25 cents.  

We only had time to explore a few miles of the Trace, but you can drive it from Natchez to Nashville, almost 450 miles.  Maybe someday we will be able to do that.  It was interesting that this long Parkway, with so much of historical interest, is only designated as a national historical area, while back in Arkansas, Hot Springs, just a few blocks long, is a National Park.   

While visiting Miss Lou, we also toured Frogmore Plantation (on the Louisiana side of the border).  This 1800-acre working cotton plantation has been operating since the early 1800s.   Part of it is kept as it was in the early 1800s, including slave row cabins and assorted plantation buildings, called dependencies.  These included barns, cane mills, butcheries and other buildings necessary to keep the plantation going.  This is from the inside of a slave cabin, looking out at the fields where they would have worked.

This tour wasn't exactly a fun and relaxing afternoon, but it is a relatively painless way to sort of experience this history. You have to commend the owners for keeping a portion of their property the way it used to be, so that the era won't be forgotten.  It was easy to imagine what it must have been like back then.  The tour also touched on reconstruction and the sharecropping era, which wasn't a barrel of laughs either. 

 

Cotton Gin

 

 

 

 

Cane Mill

 

Scales for bales

 

 

 

 

 

 

If we had gotten there a little earlier in the season, we would also have seen the current cotton ginning process, but it was the very end of the harvest season, so the action was just about over for the year.  There was still some cotton growing though.  We learned that cotton is a member of the hibiscus family and that when it first blossoms it is pink.