My walk to Miami took me through Tupelo, Mississippi, and when I looked at things to do around Tupelo, I learned that the Natchez Trace went through the city. The Trace is a very old trail that went from the Mississippi River at Natchez to the Cumberland River at Nashville and was an important transportation route in the very early 1800s, although it was used by Native Americans long before that.
The National Parks Service maintains a road along the old Trace route, called the Natchez Trace Parkway, and I decided during my walk to Miami that it might be interesting to drive along the parkway if I ever visited this area. When we decided to take a driving vacation to New Orleans, it was an opportunity to work the parkway into our trip.
We took most of two days to drive along the Trace - yesterday and today - and stayed last night in Tupelo, more because it was halfway than because I had walked through it. The surprising thing about the parkway is that it is very separate from the world around it. Almost no one lives along it, there are no stores or gas stations, no crosswalks and very few crossing streets, no shoulders, no passing lanes. There are numerous turn-offs for historical signs, trails, overlooks, picnic areas, etc., but very little connection to the outside world. The road is well-maintained, with wide grass areas on both sides cleared of trees, and the speed limit is 50 miles per hour for almost the entire trip. The whole 444 miles looks a lot like the picture above. Traffic was light, and it was a really pleasant drive.
We stopped at most of the historical markers, which mostly fell into two categories: the location of a stand, which was an old term for an inn and store for travelers; or a site related to one of the local native tribes, usually with information about how the Indians lost some of their lands before they were forced off all of them and relocated to Oklahoma. We did not stop at many of the walking trails, because temperatures were in the 90s most of the time.
In fact, my walking has been awful for the entire trip, under 2,000 steps about half of the days. I made a good decision to not worry about it during vacation.
Some highlights of the Natchez Trace Parkway included some very cool Indian mound sites, the site where Meriwether Lewis (of the Lewis and Clark expedition) died and a memorial erected there, and crossing the Tennessee River, where Natchez Trace travelers had to be ferried across, although we got to go across on a bridge. The river just looks huge there.
Before we left Tupelo this morning, we visited the birthplace of Elvis Presley, and also visited the same statue of Elvis that I posted in my blog the week I walked through Tupelo, in a park where Elvis returned to Tupelo in 1956 to give a concert after he became famous.
At the end of the Trace, we turned west, so we are on our way back home now, about halfway through the trip. We only have a couple more days of sightseeing, then a week in Oklahoma and a few long days driving back home.
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| Meriwether Lewis memorial |
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| Signs say there are nine mounds over a large area |
Food, sightseeing, the Mississippi River, art, food, voodoo, food, Bourbon Street, music, and drinks. It was a fun day.
Here, women call you baby, as in "Here you go, baby," or "Get you some napkins over there, baby," the way some waitresses in other places still might say "hon." It's kind of cute.Republicans used to chant "drill, baby, drill" for no good reason at political rallies, and I once saw Rachel Maddow say that the reason they started saying that was that Michael Steele, who was then head of the Republican National Committee, liked to say "baby" a lot. So that makes me wonder if Michael Steele is from around here, although I don't care enough to look it up. Still, "drill, baby, drill" and New Orleans are linked in my mind from now on.
We started with breakfast in the hotel, which included boudin cakes for me, because I never had those before. Turns out they are sausage and rice and made for a good breakfast.
Next, we walked over to Jackson Square, which is named after Andrew Jackson, and has a statue of him in the middle of the square. From there I walked a couple of blocks to the edge of the Mississippi River, then Jackie and I bought a picture from a woman selling her art in the square.
Next, we walked to Johnny's Po' Boys (get you some napkins over there, baby) for a shrimp po' boy, a big sandwich that even I couldn't finish in one sitting. I didn't tell Jackie about the mouse I saw run across the floor at Johnny's until we were several blocks away. Good sandwich though.
We spent most of the afternoon in our room, resting and avoiding the heat, which was in the high nineties, with humidity.
Next, we visited a voodoo store. Voodoo is a big deal in New Orleans, along with vampires, and it seemed like a good opportunity for some souvenirs. Then one more New Orleans meal, fried catfish, oysters, and shrimp. Tomorrow morning, Jackie wants beignets for breakfast, and that will round out our local food experience.
We ended the day by walking down part of Bourbon Street, which was crowded tonight and got busier as it got later. They close it off from traffic so that it is a pedestrian area at night. Then we stopped in the bar attached to our hotel and listened to music while we had drinks. All in all, it was the kind of day we wanted.
New Orleans is an old town, with its own architecture, narrow streets, and small shops, reminiscent of some European cities. Tomorrow we leave, but this has been a good stop.
Today we drove from Beaumont to our hotel in New Orleans, and we took some backroads that went close to the Gulf of Mexico rather than taking Interstate 10, driving through some low-lying and sparsely-populated bayou lands with houses and businesses on stilts, raised up so storm waters can flow underneath. Mostly it is flat and green as far as you can see, barely above sea level.
At one canal we crossed, they had a car ferry instead of a bridge, a complete surprise until we were almost upon it. It turned out that we were lucky with the timing, so we waited only ten minutes or so, and the ride across was probably less than five minutes. While we were waiting to go across, we noticed maybe half a dozen dolphins in the canal, coming up for air and then diving back down over and over.
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| First in line. The other side is in the distance. |
There were big white birds along the gulf, which the Internet says are white herons or snowy egrets - not sure if those are the same thing. Whatever they are, in one area they were perched in numbers in every tree and around bodies of water, looking like a National Geographic picture. My pictures of them look blurry, but Jackie took some pictures with her good camera, so maybe I will post one of those someday.
Now we are in New Orleans, taking an evening break and avoiding the 99-degree heat before we head out to look for dinner. Our hotel is close to Bourbon Street and Jackson Square, and we are staying two nights in one place for the first time, so tonight and tomorrow we will see the sights, taste the food, and maybe listen to some music.
We got into San Antonio around 6:00 (only because we hit another time change and are now on Central Time) with a motel near the famed Riverwalk (also near another landmark you may have heard of, called The Alamo.) It was 98 degrees even after 6:00, so Jackie did not want to go for a walk, but I did, checking out the Riverwalk near our motel.
I have been in other places with something they called a riverwalk, which consisted of a concrete trail next to a river, but this one is different. San Antonio has spent millions of dollars on the area next to the San Antonio River, with big walkways on both sides, fancy walls all around, and plenty of bridges to walk across. And that is just in the small area where I walked. The whole Riverwalk is very extensive, covering probably several miles of river. The big payoff for the city is that there are businesses all along the way, so you can stay in a hotel, shop, eat, visit a museum, and more along the river. Even on Monday in 98-degree heat, there were plenty of people out walking, and. no doubt, spending money.
Jacke and I will give it another look in the morning.
Total cost, by the way, was $2 to reserve two spots - they only let so many people in every day. My senior National Parks pass covered the rest.
The other highlight was Roswell, New Mexico. I knew that Roswell was known for alien visits, but I was not expecting to see alien portrayals all over town. Half the businesses in Roswell have pictures of aliens on their storefronts. One thing I noticed: all the aliens depicted are bright green, with black eyes and no hair. Since aliens could look like anything, but everyone has the same idea of them, you have to think that the residents of Roswell have either met these guys or had similar visions of them; it can't be coincidence that everyone's picture of them looks the same.
Tomorrow, into Texas (our seventh state) and on to San Antonio.
America Needs JESUS, Now More Then Ever.
[sic]
My blog software really wants to correct that sentence.
Today Jackie was tired, and we got off to a slow start, so we did not make many stops. However, we paid $52 to see a meteor crater, made about 50,000 years ago according to the brochure. It's very impressive, 500 feet deep and almost a mile wide. I knew before we got there that it would not be worth the price of admission due to the cheesy tourist-trap signage as we approached, but I wanted to see it, and actually it was pretty cool. Still, $27, or $25 for a senior, is clearly excessive. It's one of those things where they have guided "tours" (more of a talk - you don't get to explore the crater), have built a big building and theater and an immersive experience for kids, and your money pays for all that plus a profit margin, when really you just want to see the hole in the ground.
We also stopped in Winslow, Arizo
There was a large contingent of bikers there, and we spoke to a couple of them, one from New Zealand and one from Australia. They were on a guided tour of the US, and part of their trip goes along Route 66. Jackie said she thought they had come from Milwaukee, and they were going to end the tour in Los Angeles, weather permitting.
From Winslow we drove straight to Albuquerque, and from here we hope to get to Carlsbad Caverns tomorrow.
Our first stop was Death Valley. We parked at an overlook next to a canyon nicknamed Star Wars Canyon, because they train military jet pilots there to fly through the canyon at high speeds and low altitude. That sounded pretty cool, and then we saw a couple of jets going out for a flight, and they flew low and out of our sight. So we waited for maybe 10 minutes, hoping they were going to fly right past us, but I guess they had other plans, so no luck.
When we got to the main part of the park, the ranger warned us to get out of the area before the rains come. They are expecting two inches of rain - a year's worth for Death Valley - in the next two days, and that will mean epic flooding. The place is a built a bit like a bowl, with Death Valley at the bottom of the bowl, and all that water is going to flow towards the valley.
We visited Furnace Creek in Death Valley, the hottest place on earth, and Badwater, the lowest place in North America at negative 282 feet, and drove on a loop called Artist's Drive. You can see that the temperature, according to the car, reached 115, but actually it got up to 120 for a few minutes. I got out of the car at Badwater and walked a short way; that kind of heat feels like standing next to a big fire, so we didn't spend much time outside the car.
As we approached Kingman, Arizona, we ran into thunderstorms with lots of lightning, torrential rains, and very high winds. Our phones lit up with flash flood warnings a couple of times. The storms were still going as we sat in our room last night, but this morning the rain has stopped, and weather for Albuquerque shows clear and only 95 degrees, so all is well.
The drive today was very pretty, as we drove over some high passes - the highest I saw was over 8,500 feet - and next to the Sierra Nevada on our right side all day. The highest mountain we saw was called Mount Tom, at 13,658 feet tall.
The smoke caught up with us during the night, but we outran it as we approached California, at least for now. The drive was not the most picturesque, especially at first, because we could not see much through the smoke, and great portions of Oregon and some of Northeastern California are covered in miles and miles and more miles of sagebrush, as far as the eye can see. In a few places they have half-mile-long irrigation rigs and have flattened out the land for agriculture, but those areas are the exceptions. Sagebrush is the norm.
We drove past Albert Lake, still in Oregon, interesting because parts of it were almost dry, and we saw maybe 1,000 birds gathered on a dry bank. Then we had lunch on a bench next to Goose Lake at the Oregon-California border. On Google Maps, Goose Lake looks much bigger than Albert Lake, but Goose Lake does not appear to contain any water at all. It is just a really large, flat lakebed with grass growing in it and cattle grazing all along it. Apparently, it is a common occurrence that some of the lakes here go dry, especially in times of drought, although this is not a drought year.
Motels serve some sort of breakfast, and we stopped at Safeway and got enough food for lunch and dinner, and that may be the way forward. The big expense is the motels, which run more than $120 with tax.
It is 95 degrees here in Susanville, and it will get hotter as we drive south along the east side of the mountains, approaching Death Valley, but the hotels are comfortable, and the car is holding up well so far.
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| Sahalie Falls - photo by Jackie |
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| Potomac Great Falls |
By now I have traveled from Georgetown in DC past Great Falls, pictured here, and the West Virginia town of Harpers Ferry, known for, among other things, John Brown's raid in an unsuccessful effort to start a slave revolt in 1859.
Maryland has a strange shape to it; it is divided into three sections: one east of Chesapeake Bay and mostly cut off from the rest of the state, a main area west of the bay, and then a panhandle that pokes west between West Virginia to the south and Pennsylvania to the north. At one point in this western part of Maryland, the state narrows down to two miles wide, but then it widens out again and goes another 40 miles west. In this western area, there are only little towns like Accident, population 338; Friendsville, population 437; and our eventual destination, Oldtown, a census-designated place with a population of 30, where we will cross the Potomac River into West Virginia by way of a privately-owned bridge, about 90 miles from where we are now.
August has been a good walking month, as I have walked over 5 miles and 12,000 steps per day, but tomorrow, the 14th, is the last walking day of the month. Starting Tuesday, we will be driving across the country, on vacation and taking a break from walking, and we will not get home until a week into September.
Total walking so far is just under 225 miles, less than five percent of the whole trip.
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| Washington Monument |
The trail takes us north of the White House, Capitol Hill, and the Washington Monument, but they are less than one mile from Georgetown, the Washington, DC neighborhood where this segment ends by the Potomac River, so a side trip seems like a natural choice for anyone actually walking the trail.
In the 30 days I walked during July (excluding July 8), I walked just over 150 miles, and over 340,000 steps. It may be difficult to keep that pace during the winter, but five miles a day seems like a good rule of thumb. That makes the whole trip a bit less than 1,000 days, and around 11 million steps.
The next walking post may not come until late November, as the last Maryland segment of the trail is 167 miles long, which will take 33 days. I will be on vacation half of August, half of September, all of October, and three quarters of November, so I expect to finish this segment after Thanksgiving.
I will be writing vacation posts from around the country and across the world in the meantime.
