I think I'm paying for that cafe au lait
Footnote to the previous entry: During the swamp tour, there was a woman roughly my age from Alberta, Canada who was accompanied by someone she'd hired as a tour guide in this part of the South. Not only did her tour guide rave about Lake Martin (the tour I took) compared to other possible swamp tours, but he insisted that I try gator meat while I was in the area. Both he and the Canadian woman said it tastes like chicken. I found a place close to my hotel that served gator as an appetizer. This gator was fairly heavily spiced and deep fried. I ate mine with some of the breading removed so that I could taste the gator a bit better. After sampling gator, I'm not at all sure why people would say that "it tastes like chicken" unless they mean that it can be prepared in similar ways. In my experience, gator is quite a bit more gamey than chicken. I happen to like gamey meats, so that was fine with me.
The day after the beignets and cafe au lait (and fried alligator and shrimp etouffee), I drove to Natchez, MS. I enjoyed the drive as I said a fond farewell to Louisiana. My first stop in Natchez was the welcome center. People had recommended that I see the antebellum plantation houses, and I thought I might snag a map that would let me do a self-guided tour. They had lots of info about the history of Natchez condensed onto a 50-foot wall display. Somewhere in the details about the Natchez slave trade, I lost my taste for Natchez antebellum tourism. I also started to really feel the effects of all the salt and fat and caffeine and sugar I've been eating the previous few days. Anything I thought about doing started sounding like more trouble than it was worth, and anything I thought about eating in a restaurant sounded too intense. I decided that dinner should come from the grocery store and that after I made a grocery run, I would hunker down and veg out for the evening.
I didn't take a single photo that day.
While out shopping for dinner, I had to accept that I had traveled back into the land of serious winter weather. It wasn't so much colder in Natchez thermometer-wise, but it was cloudy and windy and I could no longer avoid putting on the winter coat that I hadn't worn in about 23 days.
I was pretty happy with my hotel room, even though they'd had some noisy equipment operating outside my window in the afternoon, until I turned off the lights to go to bed. I had a corner room with a wraparound window and a gorgeous view in daylight. After dark, I had a corner room with drapes that wouldn't cover the whole window and a flood light outside aimed right at my room. I didn't discover this until I was ready to go to bed. One of the beams of light cutting through the darkness of the room went right across the top of the bed where my head would be. I was able to improve the situation by pushing a chair up against the drapes on that side and hiding behind a couple of pillows, but it was not ideal. Grumpiness prevailed.
The next morning I woke up with a headache. When I tried to explain the drapes and lighting situation to the woman at the front desk, she couldn't quite believe me because it's a room that lots of people apparently request. All I can say about that is, a lot of people must not be bothered by bright lights shining on their faces while they're trying to get to sleep. I did gently keep at my complaint long enough that I think I got through to her (at least she pretended to make a note about it) but I was really surprised that they haven't had plenty of complaints before about the flood light situation. Oh well, I did what I could, and if I ever stay there again (not likely) I won't take a room with a number that ends in 01.
I was still feeling the effects of the salt-sugar-caffeine overload/withdrawal, and I couldn't stomach the idea of eating salty or sugary things like most of the stuff on the breakfast buffet. On top of that, this hotel forbade taking their breakable dishes to your room and they didn't provide unbreakable dishes. Grumpiness was in danger of prevailing. Then I realized that it was a good day to just grab one of their bananas to augment the cereal and nuts I had with me and to eat them in my room. Happier again.
When I went out to load my van, the sun was out and the wind wasn't blowing. There were puffy white clouds decorating the sky. Happiness was building. I gave myself a little tour of downtown Natchez before hitting the road. I took this photo down by the river:
Some of the buildings downtown remind me of New Orleans with the 2nd story balconies for sitting out and watching the world go by.
Next on the agenda was finding the Natchez Trace Parkway. My navigator did its very best to thwart me from finding it, but I did finally prevail and off I went!
About 15 miles up the road, I decided to pull in at one of the marked stops and let a car go by. I was surprised to see a visitor center staffed with a couple of nice young men who had nothing better to do than to tell me what to make sure to see on and near the trace. I was a bit hesitant to take their first suggestion because it was an 11-mile each way (22 total) side trip to where they said was the most photographed place in Mississippi, but I'm glad I did. It's called Windsor Ruins and part of it looks like this:
Here's a close-up of the detail on top:
There's a fence around the ruins, so I was limited in what angles I could capture without prominently featuring the fence. Since it's so widely photographed, I figured better pictures are available on line, and I was right. You can see for yourself if you google Windsor Ruins.
On the way to see it, I passed Alcorn State University. I'd never heard of it, and I recently read "Hidden Figures" (the book about the black women mathematicians who were the calculating muscle behind aircraft and spacecraft design in the mid-20th century), so it occurred to me that a college in Mississippi that I'd never heard of might be a black college. I was right and not only that, it was the first black land grant college in the country and Medgar Evers' alma mater.
I got off the parkway for the day a little Southwest of Jackson, Mississippi, so of course today's ear worm was "Jackson" by Johnny Cash and June Carter. Here's a fun performance of the song I'd never seen before from 1967. Johnny's wearing heels they're both dancing around a bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3NJC18Oi04 Then this is the performance I was looking for when I found that one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GvD_NQrLFo
I didn't do any sightseeing when I got to Jackson. I'll have to wait and see whether I get inspired the next morning like I did in Natchez.
The day after the beignets and cafe au lait (and fried alligator and shrimp etouffee), I drove to Natchez, MS. I enjoyed the drive as I said a fond farewell to Louisiana. My first stop in Natchez was the welcome center. People had recommended that I see the antebellum plantation houses, and I thought I might snag a map that would let me do a self-guided tour. They had lots of info about the history of Natchez condensed onto a 50-foot wall display. Somewhere in the details about the Natchez slave trade, I lost my taste for Natchez antebellum tourism. I also started to really feel the effects of all the salt and fat and caffeine and sugar I've been eating the previous few days. Anything I thought about doing started sounding like more trouble than it was worth, and anything I thought about eating in a restaurant sounded too intense. I decided that dinner should come from the grocery store and that after I made a grocery run, I would hunker down and veg out for the evening.
I didn't take a single photo that day.
While out shopping for dinner, I had to accept that I had traveled back into the land of serious winter weather. It wasn't so much colder in Natchez thermometer-wise, but it was cloudy and windy and I could no longer avoid putting on the winter coat that I hadn't worn in about 23 days.
I was pretty happy with my hotel room, even though they'd had some noisy equipment operating outside my window in the afternoon, until I turned off the lights to go to bed. I had a corner room with a wraparound window and a gorgeous view in daylight. After dark, I had a corner room with drapes that wouldn't cover the whole window and a flood light outside aimed right at my room. I didn't discover this until I was ready to go to bed. One of the beams of light cutting through the darkness of the room went right across the top of the bed where my head would be. I was able to improve the situation by pushing a chair up against the drapes on that side and hiding behind a couple of pillows, but it was not ideal. Grumpiness prevailed.
The next morning I woke up with a headache. When I tried to explain the drapes and lighting situation to the woman at the front desk, she couldn't quite believe me because it's a room that lots of people apparently request. All I can say about that is, a lot of people must not be bothered by bright lights shining on their faces while they're trying to get to sleep. I did gently keep at my complaint long enough that I think I got through to her (at least she pretended to make a note about it) but I was really surprised that they haven't had plenty of complaints before about the flood light situation. Oh well, I did what I could, and if I ever stay there again (not likely) I won't take a room with a number that ends in 01.
I was still feeling the effects of the salt-sugar-caffeine overload/withdrawal, and I couldn't stomach the idea of eating salty or sugary things like most of the stuff on the breakfast buffet. On top of that, this hotel forbade taking their breakable dishes to your room and they didn't provide unbreakable dishes. Grumpiness was in danger of prevailing. Then I realized that it was a good day to just grab one of their bananas to augment the cereal and nuts I had with me and to eat them in my room. Happier again.
When I went out to load my van, the sun was out and the wind wasn't blowing. There were puffy white clouds decorating the sky. Happiness was building. I gave myself a little tour of downtown Natchez before hitting the road. I took this photo down by the river:
Next on the agenda was finding the Natchez Trace Parkway. My navigator did its very best to thwart me from finding it, but I did finally prevail and off I went!
About 15 miles up the road, I decided to pull in at one of the marked stops and let a car go by. I was surprised to see a visitor center staffed with a couple of nice young men who had nothing better to do than to tell me what to make sure to see on and near the trace. I was a bit hesitant to take their first suggestion because it was an 11-mile each way (22 total) side trip to where they said was the most photographed place in Mississippi, but I'm glad I did. It's called Windsor Ruins and part of it looks like this:
Here's a close-up of the detail on top:
There's a fence around the ruins, so I was limited in what angles I could capture without prominently featuring the fence. Since it's so widely photographed, I figured better pictures are available on line, and I was right. You can see for yourself if you google Windsor Ruins.
On the way to see it, I passed Alcorn State University. I'd never heard of it, and I recently read "Hidden Figures" (the book about the black women mathematicians who were the calculating muscle behind aircraft and spacecraft design in the mid-20th century), so it occurred to me that a college in Mississippi that I'd never heard of might be a black college. I was right and not only that, it was the first black land grant college in the country and Medgar Evers' alma mater.
I got off the parkway for the day a little Southwest of Jackson, Mississippi, so of course today's ear worm was "Jackson" by Johnny Cash and June Carter. Here's a fun performance of the song I'd never seen before from 1967. Johnny's wearing heels they're both dancing around a bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3NJC18Oi04 Then this is the performance I was looking for when I found that one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GvD_NQrLFo
I didn't do any sightseeing when I got to Jackson. I'll have to wait and see whether I get inspired the next morning like I did in Natchez.
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