Karen’s Snapshots!

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I wish I had a pair of blue suede shoes to wear today since Tupelo, Mississippi is the birthplace of Elvis Presley. I started my day with a tour of Elvis Presley’s Birthplace; the book I bought, Guide to the Natchez Trace Parkway by F. Lynne Bachleda, identifies his birthplace as being at mile marker 260, but it really is in the town of Tupelo and off the Trace Parkway. The birthplace includes a museum, the original house he was born in, a memorial chapel, the “walk of life” and a “fountain of life”, both of which tell stories about his childhood. After touring his birthplace, I headed downtown to get a closer look at the building with the beautiful copper dome that kept attracting my attention–it was the Lee County Courthouse and is quite beautiful. I also strolled the downtown area and found the Tupelo Hardware Store where Elvis’ first guitar was bought in 1946. Tupelo is a charming little town and they definitely are proud to be the birthplace of Elvis. On the way back to the Trace Parkway, I stopped at the Tupelo National Battlefield (mile marker 259.7) and checked it out. Back on the Trace I stopped at:

• Mile 261.8 - Chickasaw Village Site (Trace Top 20) - Exhibit signs explaining typical Chickasaw Indian life and what the buildings would have looked like, as laid out along the pathways.
• Mile 266 - Tupelo Visitor Center (Trace Top 20) - The National Parks visitor center.
• Mile 269.4 - Confederate Gravesites (Trace Top 20) - Somber and peaceful, the graves of 13 unknown soldiers.
• Mile 275.2 - Dogwood Valley - A grove of dogwood trees, but they weren’t in bloom at this time.
• Mile 278.4 - Twentymile Bottom - On of the seemingly few elevated spots in Mississippi and it offered a view of the landscape below. FYI, Mississippi’s highest elevation is 806 feet above sea level on Woodall Mountain.
• Mile 283.3 - Donivan Slough - A pretty water spot.
• Mile 286.7 - Pharr Mounds (Trace Top 20) - An extremely large field with eight Indian burial mounds approximately 2000 years old.
• Mile 293.2 - Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway and Jamie L Whitten Bridge - A bridge over a man-made canal that connects the Tennessee and Tombigbee Rivers and a pretty wetland area next to it.
• Mile 308.4 - Cave Spring - A limestone cavern and what an excellent place to be when the afternoon rain started coming down, the trees are thick enough to keep the raindrops off me.
• Mile 308.8 - Bear Creek Mound - The oldest prehistoric site on the Trace, from approximately 7000-9000 BCE.
• Mile 308.9 - Crossing the Alabama State Line in the Rain
• Mile 327.3 - Colbert Ferry (Trace Top 20) - George Cobert operated a stand (inn) here and the only ferry across the Tennessee River, for which is charged admittedly high prices for.
• Mile 330.2 - Rock Spring (Trace Top 20) - A short trail around Colbert Creek with a geocache at the end. I didn’t see any hummingbirds, but there were beautiful butterflies all around.
• Mile 341.8 - Crossing the State Line into Tennessee
• Mile 350.5 - Sunken Trace - Sections of the old Trace, walked by the pioneers, can still be accessed and walked along.
• Mile 352.9 - McGlamery’s Stand - A stand owned by John McGlamery was operated here until the Civil War.
• Mile 363 - Sweetwater Branch - A nice picnic area by the creek.
• Mile 367.3 - Dogwood Mud Hole - A marker explaining how muddy the area became after rains.
• Mile 375.8 - Old Trace Drive (Trace Top 20) - A 2.5 mile one-way stretch of road that follows the old Trace path that you can drive north on.
• Mile 382.8 - Metal Ford - A pretty picnic site and creek where an old millrace was and were travelers crossed the Buffalo River.
• Mile 385.9 - Meriwether Lewis Site (Trace Top 20) - Grinder’s Stand, an old inn, is where explorer Meriwether Lewis, of Lewis and Clark Expedition fame, died in 1809. There was controversy over whether he committed suicide or was murdered. He was buried here and a monument was erected to him over his grave site.

I head off the Trace to Hohenwald, the nearest town, to spend the night.

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I leave Alexandra, Louisiana head east towards Natchez, Mississippi so that I can start touring the Natchez Trace Parkway. The benefit of the humidity in the south, that makes your clothes stick to you, is that everything is green–what a vast difference from brown California. The drive through Louisiana is through rural countryside and after a slight wrong northerly turn, I get back on the proper expressway going east. I came upon the Frogmore Plantation, but as it’s Sunday and they are closed for tours, so I just took some photos from the roadside. It’s supposed to be a real-working cotton plantation from the 1700s and that would have been neat to see in action. The next break I took was at the Ferriday Bayou Memorial Park because there was a geocache hidden there and that’s always a good excuse to stop and stretch the legs. At the Louisiana/Mississippi border, I stopped and checked out the Vidalia Landing Riverwalk to get my first look at the Mighty Mississippi River. Vidalia, Louisiana has done a nice job in creating this river park, I was really surprised there weren’t more people there, I was almost alone on this Sunday afternoon. I could see the Natchez-Vidalia Bridge, which would carry me across the border into Vidalia’s sister city Natchez; they call this border area “MissLou”. Across the bridge I go and I’m now officially in Natchez, Mississippi. My first sight of the Natchez Visitor Center is actually the back side of it, and is a circular driveway with these magnificent columns. After checking them out, I move inside and explore the displays. I learned that the “vine eating the south” is called Kudzu and can grow a foot overnight and if you sit still long enough, it’ll get you too! I then walked around Bluff Park, looking at the many history markers and viewing the river. I received a Tiger’s Eye gemstone from a lovely southern gentleman, named Armand, that I met in Bluff Park; he said that the Tiger’s Eye brings good luck to travelers–what a wonderful way to start my travels.

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I arrived in Alexandria, Louisiana this afternoon as my starting place for a road trip through Mississippi and Tennessee. The Alexandria International Airport is the old England Air Force Base airport that was converted after the military base closed in the 1990s. I decided to find a geocache or two before heading over to the hotel and the caches took me to the England AFB Heritage Park, a display of old airplanes. The display is across the street from the Oakwing Golf Club, which holds a small veteran’s cemetery and that is where the geocache actually was. The display is quite impressive and I spent some time looking at all the old planes. I did find my geocache, so off to the hotel, it’s been a long day flying out there.

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