Louisiana Road Trip 2011, Part 5: Natchez to Arnaudville

Road trip packing list. One of the great things about a road trip packing list is you can bring stuff with you that's too bulky for a plane or backpacking trip. Example: For this road trip, I brought my shelf stereo (similar to this) that I can take into my on-road lodgings for guaranteed beautiful sound in my habitat. Falls under the category of "comfort items."

Today I passed a few places that I want to revisit for a better view:

Credit: Cody Sewell

John James Audubon Bridge. A stunner from first glimpse to the final crossover. Two tall sentinals appear in the distance. As you reach the bridge, 22-karat gold rays expand toward you, then away, then toward, then away. 

It is emotionally uplifting to see the elegant execution of a mundane function - getting people from point A to point B.












In the video below, someone attempts to capture the bridge's beauty:



If I go back home via the same route, I'm going to take a try at filming the bridge myself.

Louisiana scenic drive. On Highway 77, almost a country lane, really, the scenery was lovely. On my right were swollen, marshy front yards occupied by egrets. On my left were lush green fields. Live oaks. Spanish moss. Meandering bayou.

Mississippi River from Natchez' Bluff Trail

Natchez. This morning, I had awakened in Natchez. Stayed at the Days Inn on Highway 61, which was not only budget-priced, but served dinner last night, for God's sake! And it wasn't bad either, chicken cacciatore, green beans, and corn muffins. Microwave and fridge in the room plus free wifi. And the staff reflected warm Southern hospitality with friendly greetings and swift, effective remedies to a few issues I encountered in my room.

If you're into casino gambling and plantation tours, then Vicksburg and Natchez will probably keep you delighted for at least two days. I'm not into either of those things, so while the two towns are pleasant, I felt satisfied with the one-nighters in each.

Uptown Grocery, Canal Street, Natchez

In Natchez, I drove downtown and parked in the stupendous Natchez visitor center's lot, which is on the bluff over the Mississippi River. I walked from the visitor center to Natchez' Bluff Trail and its end, then back and down to "Under the Hill" for an indifferent lunch at a riverfront place. Then chugged up, up, up the hill back to the visitor center, and took off for Arnaudville, Louisiana.


 

Louisiana Road Trip 2011, Part 3: To Vicksburg

Highway 1, Mississippi

Checked out of my cabin at Leroy Percy State Park. Glorious sunny day. I asked the staff person which road was prettier to drive down to Vicksburg, Highway 1 or 61. She said 1, so that's the way I went.

Highway 61 is the Mississippi Blues Trail; Highway 1 is the Mississippi River Trail.

As I passed flat, bright-green fields of ... winter wheat? .... with tree stands in the distance, I listened to a slow, beat-ful song by Ali Farke Toure, which seems to reflect the rhythm of the Delta. I don't know why the flatness of the Delta evokes different feelings than the flatness of, say, Kansas, but it does. Maybe the mixture of spilled blood and rich river soil that brings up stories, written or sung, and deep rhythms.

This song came up during my drive (from my new "Mix 1" created last night) --- Nana Mouskouri singing Casta Diva --- and it fit the Delta, too:

Didn't do much today except drive from the park to Vicksburg, about an hour and a half trip. Checked into the Battlefield Inn, which is right next to the Vicksburg National Military Park. The reviews on Tripadvisor were all over the place, so I wanted to look at a room before I forked over any bucks. (Did the same thing at the hotel in Oklahoma City on a trip with Carol.) The room was adequate for my needs and I quickly set up housekeeping.

I'm reading a selection from my dwindling stockpile of classic science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke's book of stories, The Wind From the Sun.

Louisiana Road Trip 2011, Part 2: Gators and Greenville

Alligator Lake, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Leroy Percy State Park

I awakened this morning to a beautiful lake and wood view from my cabin at Leroy Percy State Park. (Remember the Percy name for later.) The lake is Alligator Lake, and gators do live here, though this time of year, they're likely snuggled under mud for a long winter nap. Still, the park staff told me that on especially warm and sunny winter days, some gators emerge to enjoy the sunshine.

Cabin 2, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Cabin 2, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Cabin 2 porch, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

View of Alligator Lake from Cabin 2 screened porch, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Cabin 2 backyard, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Beautiful, yes?

Alas, the two park trails were too sodden for walking, so off to Greenville I went.

Greenville

Greenville is on the Mississippi Blue Trail ...and the Hot Tamale Trail.

Remember, a week or so ago, Carol and I made an abortive attempt to get us some Delta-style tamales. Today, mission accomplished at Greenville's Hot Tamale Heaven.

Yes, they tasted good. Pretty much like tamales in the Southwest, I think. But I'm not a tamale connoisseur.  

I ate them in the parking lot of the Winterville Mounds, a mildly interesting Indian site from the 1300s-ish.

I climbed atop one of the mounds. Reminded me of the ruins near Tlaxcala that I visited with Kate and Pam. What a walk that was from one set of ruins to the other! The Xochitécatl ruins looked so close!

View of Xochitécatl ruins from the Cacaxtl ruins, near Tlaxcala, Mexico

The endless walk.

The long walk from the Cacaxtl ruins to the Xochitecatl pyramids, near Tlaxcala, Mexico

And finally. The view from one of the Xochitécatl pyramids:

View from Xochitecatl pyramid, near Tlaxcala, Mexico

The view from the Winterville Mound isn't as dramatic as that from the Xochitécatl pyramid. But it was fun remembering that day in Mexico while I looked out over the green Mississippi flood plain.

Despite my recent epiphany about museums, the 1927 Greenville Flood Museum looked intriguing. The museum is in the carriage house of a former plantation. In fact, this carriage house is believed to be the oldest structure in Greenville (the oldest still surviving, that is). Mike Bostic, the museum docent, screened a PBS documentary about the 1927 Greenville flood, called Fatal Flood, which told a disturbing story about how economics, man's inhumanity against man, and family betrayal factored into the town's flood response. Remember Leroy Percy? He and his son, Will Percy, played a prominent role in the story of the flood. One of the people interviewed in the documentary was John Barry, who wrote Rising Tide: The Great
Mississippi Flood of 1927 and how it Changed America. Apparently, the surviving Percys were livid about Barry's portrayal of them in the book.

Mike and I had a short but interesting conversation about "Southern writers." I didn't know this, but there is evidently so much cachet attached to being a "Southern writer" that there are authors who perhaps exaggerate their Southern ties so they can self-identify as such.  (When will the stalwart Midwesterners get their deserved glory?)


Next I went to the Cypress Preserve, a pretty park with a trail through a virgin stand of cypress. As I walked, I breathed in the pungent fragrance of fallen cypress needles.


 















Getting rid of stuff. It was almost dark when I returned to my cabin. I spent an enjoyable evening decluttering the music list on my laptop and mp3 player, culling songs and musicians I no longer wanted to hear.
For example, I could not abide the no-nuance voice of blueswoman Susan Tedeschi one more day.

And though I love Carolina Chocolate Drops, I have come to despise Trampled Rose, one of the songs on their Genuine Negro Jig album. (I loathe the song so much that I had a story in my head that went like this: One of the Drops guys didn't feel as if he'd gotten his share in the group's limelight, so he complained and complained to the other two about how he'd written this song, and they owed it to him to record the awful thing, and they gave in. I didn't know til today that the damn song is actually an old standby and multiple artists have covered it. For God's sake, why?)

Now gone, all gone. Very satisfying.

Talking about Carolina Chocolate Drops gives me the excuse to play a favorite, Snowden's Jig:

 

On the Mississippi Blues Trail

Abe's BBQ, Clarksdale, MS

 Carol and I left for Jackson, Mississippi, this morning a little after 5:00 a.m. to take the secondary-road route.

Destination: Jackson, MS.

Purpose: Carol wants the free whiskey sour she's gonna get at the Cabot Lodge. This hotel brings fond memories of past free-happy-hours-with-room she's enjoyed when traveling to the Gulf Coast for vacations. Also, Jackson is closer to Missouri than Savannah and has more of interest than Hattiesburg, which were other destination contenders for this tiny holiday.

The bulk of our travel today was in the Mississippi Delta. The Delta is flat. Sometimes one can appreciate flat; sometimes not. We experienced both feelings on the way down to Jackson.

When we crossed the Mississippi River on the Arkansas-Mississippi border, it was swollen wide. We frequently saw high, lesser rivers that had breached their usual borders, flooding trees' lower trunks.

Til I did a little research for this trip, I didn't know about the Mississippi Blues Trail.  If I get an offer to join Teach for America and they place me in the Mississippi Delta region, I can see myself exploring the Blues Trail on many weekends. (Note to gods: New Mexico is still my first choice.) 

We stopped for lunch in Clarksdale with the plan to buy hot tamales (Delta style) for lunch on the road and to pick up dinner for later from Abe's BBQ.  We accomplished half our mission, Carol getting chili dogs and me a BBQ'd pork sandwich. Hicks Tamales, a famous tamale vendor, was closed. Sunday.

We agreed that Abe's makes tasty food.

That was the most eventful part of the drive down to Jackson. When we arrived at the hotel, I poured myself some delicious Georgian wine and Carol got her satisfying whiskey sour.