We were in exploration mode this morning although it was difficult to leave our front row perch overlooking the Mississippi River and the fascinating barge traffic moving up- and downriver. We can hear the low rumble of the towboat engines a long time before we can see the barges but, after a long procession of goods, the massive river boat pushing the load will pass by our RV. The biggest array of barges being pushed by one boat we saw today numbered 18 lashed 3 wide and 6 long in front of the giant river tug. We noted the tugs make more noise and create a much larger wake going upstream. The river looks like it is going at about 5 to 10 knots headed for the Gulf of Mexico about 200 miles downstream. It is great being right on the edge of this mighty river.
We finally drug ourselves away from the river’s edge and headed across the Mississippi into Natchez to check out some of the residential architecture. Despite having a population of around 15,000, the number of spectacular buildings is way out of line with the number of folks living here. The primary reason is because most of the spectacular houses were plantation estates owned by folks who made their money from cotton picked and processed by slaves. It is probably quite easy to make a fantastic estate for yourself if you never pay for the labor that did the actual work. Slave owners were shitheads but, not surprisingly, there is no mention of that around these parts. This part of the world just thinks slavery was a quaint custom and all of its former evils can be ignored. There are still a lot of the folks that refuse to acknowledge the dreadful evils of owning people who have no hope of redemption. The buildings we saw in Natchez were truly magnificent structures with lawns big enough for a Super Bowl although the rich families who still own them charge $20 a head to go in and look so we did our recon from the street.
After a bit of clumsy driving around on Natchez streets with their one-way sections, forbidden turns and dead ends, we chose to get out into the country for a bit so we headed up the first section of the Natchez Trace. The Trace was the shortcut for those late 18th and early 19th centuries who used to raft goods down the Ohio and Mississippi from northern climes, sell the goods in New Orleans, break up their boats for lumber and sell it and then return home via a long walk on the Trace. If one follows the shoreline home, it is about 2000 miles up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. It is only 450 miles up the Trace through the Tennessee and Ohio Valleys to Nashville. We stopped in at an old inn called the Mount Locust Inn from about 1800 that was the first stop up the Trace for those who did not want to get robbed by trailside bandits. It looks old, but comfy.
The Trace road has a maximum speed limit of 50 mph but we seemed incapable of maintaining that rate because the scenery is gorgeous. There was almost no traffic so we didn’t piss anybody off by stopping every 1/4 mile to gawk. After about 15 miles, we turned off the Trace and returned to Vidalia, rewarding ourselves by stopping at a local eatery we found called the Butt Hut. They have excellent barbecued stuff. The brisket is almost divine. They offer a Butt Hut Burger with a beef patty, a covering of the crispy tasty parts sliced from the outside of the brisket, grilled onions, cole slaw and BBQ sauce of your choice for $9.
There are photos of some nice Natchez cribs you can see by clicking here