It was our intention to drive into nearby Louisville today to do the laundry but we discussed it and about 5 seconds later we had decided on a different agenda not involving a laundromat. Instead, we chose to drive down to the office/restaurant here at Lake Tardicaca and try their lunch buffet. It only cost $9.95 a head and the food was very tasty.
After that, we found our way to MS-25 where we intended to go back onto the Natchez Trace south of Kosciusco. On many highways here, we have spotted sullen young men wearing pants with wide horizontal stripes and high visibility garments picking up the roadside trash and most of the roads we have been on in Mississippi have had pristine shoulders they are gorgeous. Unfortunately, not 40 minutes after leaving the restaurant I noticed extremely uncomfortable peristalsis activity in my abdomen and almost immediately realized I urgently needed a restroom. Maybe the restaurant food at Lake Tardicaca Resort was not as good as I thought. Mississippi countryside is mostly rural with slender two-lane roads without pullouts, wide grass shoulders, very few communities and even fewer roadside restrooms. The only turnouts are driveways to roadside residences. It was too far to Kosciusco where we knew there was a john. I began to search frantically for alternatives.
Fortunately for me, Mississippi terrain is mostly gently rolling hills arranged in such a way that large sections of the numerous roadside graveyards are not visible from the road. I skidded to a stop next to one of them and hopped out of the car taking some tissues my devoted spouse thrust at me on the way out the door. I made a stiff-legged walk down the slight grade to a likely looking headstone that I could grasp while I solved my now frantic intestinal issue. I was all ready to go on some poor cracker’s head with my trousers around my ankles and commencing to crouch when, due to the reaction load on the headstone, the top half of the monument started to slide at me so far that it was going to slip right off the little marble plinth supporting it. I was in a quandary. I was going to crap whether I intended to or not but I was suddenly presented with a big marble slab being balanced on the plinth edge, prevented from tumbling down the hill by my grasp, my pants were down and footwork was tricky. After a Herculean effort to get the big slab of stone back where it belonged, I quickly picked another cracker’s head on which to unload. I did not look to see who the unfortunate deceased victim was. I felt a bit bad about it but in reality I was more worried somebody would spot me desecrating graves, call the local parish sheriff and I would be trying to explain the situation. Therefore, I finished my heinous activity and made a hasty retreat.
We eventually made it down to milepost 135 on the Trace which is as far as we had gone north from milepost 0 in Natchez. The Trace at this time of year is liberally bordered with fields of wildflowers. We spotted some wild turkeys, some great blue herons and two little blue herons (we’ve only seen one of them before) on our passage north today. The Trace here is slowly rising in elevation and the dogwoods north of Kosciusco are blooming along the highway, complementing the roadside wildflowers with brilliant white treeflowers.
We pulled off the Trace at French Camp, part museum and part little town. They have some great old buildings here from the early 1800’s and some really nice houses for the residents. The old buildings looked like they were chilly in winter.
We continued up the Trace to a place called Jeff Busby, where one can drive up to the second-highest place in Mississippi at 602 feet. It is the first time since we left central Texas where we could see further than the next curve in the road due to Mississippi’s mostly flat, poor-draining terrain and abundant trees.
At Jeff Busby we left the Trace and took the return drive to Louisville, maybe 25 miles. On this section of road, it was plainly evident that the sullen men in the striped attire had not been here yet.
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