June 4

Pitchas.  I have pitchas.  Th first is a shot of the Mississippi River.  I couldn't stop on the bridge, so had to take the obligatory shot from Natchez.

That's it.  Sorry.

Next is a shot of a far southern part of the Natchez Trace.

Oh, wait.  It looks just like a nice road through some trees.  Everybody's been there, done that.  Yeah, well,  see, the neat thing about the Trace is that it is like this for just shy of 450 miles.  Can't get that on film.  Sorry.

So, today, I left Tupelo just before 8:30.  Had to wait for it to warm up a bit, believe it or not.  Started out when it reached 70.  Wonderful drive today.  It stayed in the 70s almost all day, with blue skies and fleecy white clouds.  I stopped at some Indian mounds constructed around 100 BC to 200 AD.   I believe these were influenced by the Hopewell Culture centered in Ohio and Illinois.  Those are much more extensive, but these are impressive for a group of hunter/gatherers.

Went to a Mississippi state park Pat found for me.  She's like a tour guide from afar.  Anyway, it is named something like Tushibimbo State Park and is very nice.  Lots of different plant species, including ferns found only in that area.  And poison ivy no doubt, so I did not go for a hike.  Looking at a hiking guide I picked up, I see the park is actually named 'Tishomingo' but it will forever be Tushibimbo for me.

Crossed into northwest Alabama for a while, then crossed the Tennessee River on a bridge used solely for the Trace.  So I did stop in the middle of the bridge.  Very little traffic on the Trace.

Looks like a lake, doesn't it?  It's a river.  Now, imagine the Mississippi.

Crossed into Tennessee and found a town just off the Trace where I had a sandwich.  Miss Hazelbea's  Sweets and Treats.  It sold mostly candy homemade candy and pastries and cakes, but offered some excellent sandwiches, too.  Not as many damned beautiful trees in Tennessee so you can actually see towns that are close.

Farther along, stopped to see the grave of Meriwether Lewis.  He died under somewhat mysterious circumstances while staying in an inn - I use the word loosely - on the Trace.  Bernard DeVoto suggests he was murdered, but most later scholars think he committed suicide.  Even Jefferson noted a tendency to depression (he didn't call it that) ran in the family.  He and Clark led one of the most successful expeditions in history and they lost only one man, Sgt. Floyd.  And he likely perished of appendicitis and would have died no matter where he was.  It was an astonishing feat, and all the more so since Lewis was battling depression even while he led the expedition.  Seeing his grave and the little restored log building where he shot himself ate the age of 35 was moving.

Lewis's grave, which I screwed up in this shot, but fortunately also took with my real camera.

This is a shot of a few feet of the original Trace.  Of course, the fence would not have been there.

And much of the Trace was very wet.  Stopped at another site that quoted a traveler in 1812 saying that he had forded 5 streams and a swamp in one day's trip before bedding down in the rain with some Indians.

Also got off the Trace to visit Leiper's Fork.  This was the suggestion of my good friends at the Tupelo Hardware Store.  It was quite nice, though I did not stay as I was getting tired and wanted to make Nashville and find a place to stay.  Which I did, Nashville being a nearby bedroom community to Leiper's Fork.  I am now on the north side of town so as to not fight traffic when I leave to head for Louisville tomorrow.  Plan to stop at Mammoth Cave National Park.  I've never been there.

A dull enough blog today, but, hey!  even Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare all the time.