Another road trip!
This winter I'm taking a shorter snowbird trip, this time to the Southeast U.S. I hope you'll come along with me!
Preparing for the trip, I was concerned that I wasn't looking forward to it more than I was. Then on the morning when I was getting ready to leave, after the last of my stuff was in my van, I got excited. Now looking forward to the trip was no longer about getting past all the preparations I would need to do. It was here and I was free to go!
Part of that semi-reluctant anticipation was about planning when to put stuff in the van. Will it be warm enough outside that I can put out my gallon jugs of water a few days early without concern about freezing? Will it be dry enough that I can put off loading most of the stuff until the last minute without tracking lots of water into the van, or do I need to load up in advance on a clear day? It turned out to be the latter, according to the weather forecast. So the stuff I loaded isn't as organized as I would like as I hit the road, but it is in the van, and it got there dryly.
Conflicting weather forecasts the last couple of days alternated between predictions of "rain and snow showers" and "cloudy" on the morning when I would depart. The day before it was telling me "rain and snow showers" so I loaded up everything I could in a light drizzle of a rain that was not bad to deal with at all. The morning of departure, I saw a forecast telling me "cloudy" and when I first poked my nose outside that day the sun was shining. How auspicious! However by the time I actually left it was starting to drizzle again and during the first hour of driving the temperature slowly dropped and the precip alternated between rain and sleet. Eventually I got to that promised cloudy weather and the temperature started to head slightly upward again, but it was never any nicer than gray and cold and windy.
Then came the next day. The sun was shining, it was cold but it was crisp and not windy, so it was a beautiful winter day to start down the Natchez Trace Parkway. If you haven't heard of NTP, it's a limited-access road that runs from just South of Nashville, TN down to Natchez, MS with a 50-mph speed limit for all 440 miles. It roughly follows the original trade route established by Native Americans and later used by European explorers and settlers. You can read more about it here if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natchez_Trace Water is frequently visible from the NTP of course it makes sense that the humans and animals that traveled it would follow the rivers. Here's a short video of some streams that converge into a small waterfall just off the NTP:
https://youtu.be/6tZ6aaEi6ms
I've gotten really spoiled by traveling outside of high season. I sure am savoring it before I get to Florida, because I know that won't be the case there at this time of year. Most of the places I stopped along the NTP, I was the only person there at the time. I snapped this photo from an overlook:
It's January and there are no leaves on trees, so I didn't realize how lush (by January standards in the middle of the country) the land was I was driving through until I took a turn off the NTP and suddenly everything looked so much more flat and brown. The waterways along the parkway make all the difference.
One major stop along the parkway is the memorial to Meriwether Lewis that marks his gravesite. It's a simple stone monument, but the marker is anything but ordinary. It uses language that feels contemporary to his life and times and leaves me wondering just what evidence they found that confirmed the identity of his skeleton.
Later I learned that the cause of his death was a gunshot wound, and that the mystery is about whether he was murdered or took his own life. So my guess is that the skeletal remains matched the reported wounds on his death certificate.
Preparing for the trip, I was concerned that I wasn't looking forward to it more than I was. Then on the morning when I was getting ready to leave, after the last of my stuff was in my van, I got excited. Now looking forward to the trip was no longer about getting past all the preparations I would need to do. It was here and I was free to go!
Part of that semi-reluctant anticipation was about planning when to put stuff in the van. Will it be warm enough outside that I can put out my gallon jugs of water a few days early without concern about freezing? Will it be dry enough that I can put off loading most of the stuff until the last minute without tracking lots of water into the van, or do I need to load up in advance on a clear day? It turned out to be the latter, according to the weather forecast. So the stuff I loaded isn't as organized as I would like as I hit the road, but it is in the van, and it got there dryly.
Conflicting weather forecasts the last couple of days alternated between predictions of "rain and snow showers" and "cloudy" on the morning when I would depart. The day before it was telling me "rain and snow showers" so I loaded up everything I could in a light drizzle of a rain that was not bad to deal with at all. The morning of departure, I saw a forecast telling me "cloudy" and when I first poked my nose outside that day the sun was shining. How auspicious! However by the time I actually left it was starting to drizzle again and during the first hour of driving the temperature slowly dropped and the precip alternated between rain and sleet. Eventually I got to that promised cloudy weather and the temperature started to head slightly upward again, but it was never any nicer than gray and cold and windy.
Then came the next day. The sun was shining, it was cold but it was crisp and not windy, so it was a beautiful winter day to start down the Natchez Trace Parkway. If you haven't heard of NTP, it's a limited-access road that runs from just South of Nashville, TN down to Natchez, MS with a 50-mph speed limit for all 440 miles. It roughly follows the original trade route established by Native Americans and later used by European explorers and settlers. You can read more about it here if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natchez_Trace Water is frequently visible from the NTP of course it makes sense that the humans and animals that traveled it would follow the rivers. Here's a short video of some streams that converge into a small waterfall just off the NTP:
https://youtu.be/6tZ6aaEi6ms
I've gotten really spoiled by traveling outside of high season. I sure am savoring it before I get to Florida, because I know that won't be the case there at this time of year. Most of the places I stopped along the NTP, I was the only person there at the time. I snapped this photo from an overlook:
It's January and there are no leaves on trees, so I didn't realize how lush (by January standards in the middle of the country) the land was I was driving through until I took a turn off the NTP and suddenly everything looked so much more flat and brown. The waterways along the parkway make all the difference.
One major stop along the parkway is the memorial to Meriwether Lewis that marks his gravesite. It's a simple stone monument, but the marker is anything but ordinary. It uses language that feels contemporary to his life and times and leaves me wondering just what evidence they found that confirmed the identity of his skeleton.
Later I learned that the cause of his death was a gunshot wound, and that the mystery is about whether he was murdered or took his own life. So my guess is that the skeletal remains matched the reported wounds on his death certificate.
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