Day 12: The Natchez Trace Parkway

 

For the last two days, our vacation intersected with my virtual walk from Washington to Miami, as we drove along the Natchez Trace all the way from the southern end at Natchez, Mississippi to the northern end near Nashville, Tennessee.

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.

Meriwether Lewis memorial

Signs say there are nine mounds over a large area