We used our day today traveling on our next segment of the Natchez Trace. Those tenacious enough to have read the last few days of this blog have probably found that there is considerable mention of the Natchez Trace. Our intention is to cover the entire distance of this historic American trail during this year’s tour. I should have mentioned this previously but I’m an old guy and I’m sticking with that as my excuse.
We are currently camped off the Trace near Vicksburg so we drove north on US-61 until we started going east on I-20 for about 20 miles, intersecting the Trace at Raymond, a place that is labelled with a sign because there is nothing else there. Before getting to Raymond, we did spot some roadside Americana and some nifty old houses and we also found a residence where the owner has a maybe 3 foot high circle of beer cans about 15 feet across neatly piled in his front yard. There doesn’t seem to be any recycling in Mississippi because if there was, the guy would be rich. We then turned south on the old road to fill in our next increment of Trace exploration. Along the way the two-lane highway gently curves and climbs and descends over small hills as it passes through gorgeous hardwood forest. We did find it strange that this road, without the benefits of rural electrification conductors and poles, people, billboards or even any intersections was not a place to find wildlife. We saw a lizard, two snakes and some birds. We saw two deer but they were both road kill and at the center of big vulture get-togethers.
We stopped in at a former town called Rocky Springs that was a settlement of some 2,500 folks back in 1830 but poor soil conservation, the Civil War, the boll weevil and the abolition of slavery have left nothing but a Methodist church, a safe bolted to the ground and a cistern. It is located in beautiful surroundings but there’s just nothing left. Most of the former structures’ foundations are gone because lousy soil practices have turned the place into a very green badland.
We exited the Trace in Port Gibson, where we checked out some of the beautiful old houses and churches before getting on US-61 for the return trip north to Vicksburg. One of the churches has an enormous gold fist pointing its finger into the sky for some reason. It was a very spiffy finial for their steeple. I wonder what it means.
Check today’s pix by clicking here