Natchez

Friday
We left Vicksburg to drive the last section of the Natchez Trace Parkway, stopping at a couple of interesting places to see a nice waterfall. The creeks, and indeed the old Trace itself, often seemed to be deeply sunken into the ground, also the creeks were very muddy, with lots of sand deposits. One of the pull ins was called Loess Bluff, which started ringing bells within my head. It was here that we started to get to understand some of the geology of the area, but more of that later.
We arrived in Natchez in good time and set up, leaving ourselves time to relax in the afternoon.
Thus we have almost ended our tour along the Natchez Trace.

Saturday
Sun came up to to a clear, cloudless sky, but chilly.
We visited the Visitor Center first and found out a bit about the history. We have discovered that many of the visitor centers in the States are more like history museums for their town and you can often find out a lot by taking a bit of time there. Natchez was little affected physically by the Civil War, as it capitulated quickly after Vicksburg fell in July 1863. However the reconstruction period after the war devastated Natchez, many of the plantation owners were ruined by the collapse of the confederate currency, having to sell/give land to feed slaves for sharecropping, also by taxes, a downturn in the cotton market and the greed of the seed merchants. Natchez very nearly died. However there were, and still are, a large number of very beautiful houses and mansions from that golden age of The South before the war called the Antebellum period. Shades of Scarlet O'Hara.
We resolved to take a carriage ride round the town, as we had enjoyed them in other historic towns. This was a very pleasant activity and allowed us to see a number of very interesting buildings in the centre of the the town. One of the most interesting, if not the prettiest, was the house of Captain Leather's. He was a riverboat owner/captain. His claim to fame was a race from New Orleans to St Louis, some 1250 miles. His boat the Natchez VI was matched agains the Robert E Lee. He lost, but ad the moral victory as he raced with a full cargo and passengers, whereas the Robert E Lee was empty and stripped down for speed. He lost by 6 hours in the three day race. Very exciting.

For lunch, we visited the Natchez Coffee Shop and had a very nice cup of coffee, a sandwich, gumbo and a very unhealty chocolate cake with pecans (in this part of the world they are pronounced pi-carn, with a french accent) on top. One interesting aside, a couple of tables away a woman and what looked like her granddaughter came in to eat. The woman spoke with a French accent, not unusual as there are many foreign tourists in Natchez. However, I noticed that the girl also spoke with a heavy French accent. Oh, O.K., they are both French. Then I thought, if they are both French, why are they speaking English, with a French accent, surely they would just speak French. This was our first taste of Cajun's. This very pleasant lunch made for as much exertion as we could take, so we went back to the trailer for a rest, before going out for dinner to one of the famous restaurants, The King's Head Tavern.
We had a lovely meal, Sally had flounder stuffed with crab, I had shrimp (prawn) linguine. We got talking to the people at the tables near us. They were teachers, but very nice, one of them also owned a farm in Louisiana. They were all Cajun and spoke American with a French accent! However, they did not speak French at all. We had a great evening and hope to go and stay with one couple next spring so that we can get to understand the Cajun culture a bit better.
While we were in the Kings Head, we found out that it was very old, dating back to the 1790's. The inn was where travellers would gather to find others who would be travelling the Natchez Trace. They would arrive there from New Orleans, after selling their goods, and wait there until they had a group of about fifteen ,then start off up the Trace towards home. So, we had now found the original starting fpoint of the Natchez Trace and eaten there, just like they had done two hundred years before. This made a memorable conclusion to our Natchez Trace Trail adventure, which we have really enjoyed this past two weeks.