Rob ALWAYS loves to travel- so much to see, so little time….left!!!
I heard about a book called America’s Amazon which chronicles the greatest amount of floral and faunal (new word for me) diversity in the USA. I told Rob that I would like to go to the Mobile Delta in Alabama someday.
Rob has an itch to visit nearby Mississippi and to scratch off the last remaining state on his scratch off map. So he went into research mode and put together an 18 day itinerary. He originally wasn’t going to have it be that long but he kept finding more things to explore!! We are retired so we have time!!
Our first stop was Cookeville, TN. They were experiencing a severe thunderstorm with thunder and lightning. We learned on the radio the the city is pronounced Kook-ville. We felt right at home!!
Right outside Nashville, we started our multi-day journey on the historic Natchez Trace. (Trace is the French word for Trail.)
“The Natchez Trace Parkway… is not a highway, but a long narrow park.” Along 444 miles from Nashville,TN to Natchez, MS, the Natchez Trace goes through Tennessee, Alabama and all the way through Mississippi.
Next, the Native Americans started to follow the paths to hunt the animals using them and for their own transportation.
Later boatmen called kaintucks floated agricultural goods, coal, livestock, etc. down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to markets in Natchez and New Orleans. Once the goods on the boats were sold, the flatboats were useless since they relied on the river currents and were often dismantled and sold as lumber.
From Natchez, the boatmen would begin the long walk home or if they had enough money could buy a horse. It took 20 days by horse and 30 days on foot.
More than 10,000 Kaintucks traveled the Old Trace in the year 1810 alone.
(The Kaintuck period, from 1785 to 1830, marked the heaviest use of the Old Trace. After the steamboat became popular for travel, travel on the Old Trace declined.)
Next came the postal riders in 1800.
Along the way, there were stands which provided food and lodging and sometimes acted as a trading post. The Natives Americans were the only ones with permission to run the stands in exchange for the right to travel through their lands. There was a stand every 20-30 miles.
Traveling the Trace was not for the faint of heart. This “snake-infested, mosquito-beset, robber-haunted, Indian-traveled forest path was lamented by the pious, cussed by the impious, and tried everyone’s strength and patience.”
Tonight we stay in Lawrenceburg where many horse driven carriages of Amish can be seen. What a surprise! Apparently in 1941, Amish from Ohio and Pennsylvania came here seeking good farmland. Others came from Mississippi. They request no pictures.
We ate at a Mexican Restaurant. We always try to practice our Spanish. We ran out of chips but I didn’t know how to say chips. I asked our long-suffering waiter,”¿Como se dice chips?” He said, “Chips!” We all had a good laugh.
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