Better Days

After our setbacks of yesterday we set out bright and early today to see if we could make up the lost miles and make it to New Orleans (please pronounce this 'Norlens'). We sped along the I10 with Jim and Kathy, with a short stop for fuel and a longer stop for lunch at a Kangaroo Express Truck Stop.
As we approached New Orleans we crossed Lake Ponchartrain on a bridge abut 5 miles long. It was here that the road started to deteriorate. So we slowed down. The problem is the concrete slabs they use to build the road. Often one end would sink slightly (perhaps only half an inch), so every 20ft or so we would be going over a bump, unfortunately once the car has gone across then the trailer wheels cross it and give us another bump. This causes a pitching motion which is quite uncomfortable. What is worse is that everynow and then the speed/bump ratio produces a harmonic motion effect, so the bumps get bigger and bigger, then it is not only uncomfortable, it becomes worrying and downright dangerous, so we have to slow down to 50 m.p.h. One little set of bumps actually made the car leave the road and bounce three times before we could get it the pitching to stop, so we slowed down to 45 m.p.h. Eventually we drove into New Orleans, the road is very busy. It is elevated so we could see first of all the, now green, housing areas where Katrina had devastated homes, but they were only cleared, not replaced. Then new housing, where old homes have been replaced.
Then as we approached the heart of New Orleans we looked down on The French Quarter. However, here the road system gets complicated. To cross the Mississippi three major roads merge into one, plus access from the local French Quarter and Business district We made sure we took the correct exit, which was on the left (fast lane). Jim and Kathy had traffic forcing between us, so dropped back, this made walkie-talkie communication difficult, just when we needed it most, because as we are towing a trailer we could not actually see them, unless going round a bend. We swung round the Superdome and filtered into all the traffic merging to cross the huge bridge across the Mississippi (two bridges really, as there is one for each direction). We were now travelling East, rather than West, as we came off the bridge we had to select the correct exit to take us on to Westwego and our campsite, as the road kept splitting into various roads to take traffic away from the Bridge area. We managed without making a mistake, but it was quite hectic.
Within a few minutes we were turning into the peace and tranquility of the Bayou Segnette State Park and setting up on our campsites. We had a really nice relaxing meal, Jimmy cooked great pork chops. Halfway through the mosquitos descended, llike a cloud and we had no option but to pick everything up and run for the RV and finish our supper indoors.
Still we had sfaely made it to Norlens.

The end is nigh!

For some reason the last week of our trips always sees a big gap in our blog.
Whether the pace of life hots up and we don't have time, or the relevance of the blog diminishes, I think possibly the latter.
However here we are sat in a Post-Christmas haze and I feel the need to round off our most recent trip to the States.
The last blog entry shows us arriving at Sertoma for the Thanksgiving Meet.
Well, we had a very pleasant Thanksgiving. The weather was very cold, so there was not as much sitting out as usual. The Thanksgiving Feast was as good as ever. The concerts were very good. There was an excellent line up. Bluegrass Brothers, James King, Gary Waldrop, Goldwing Express, Nothin' Fancy to name but a few.
We enjoyed a new band Tomorrow's News very much.
All too soon Sunday came round and we made our way back to Connie and Jim's house to clean and close up the Trailer.
We flew home on the Wednesday evening and arrived home safely on the Thursday lunch time.
Thus ended our 6th trip to the United States, titled From Bluegrass to Blue Sea, as we intended to explre the area from Kentucky south to the Gulf Of Mexico. We did see the sea, but only as we crossed the estuary to the west of Pensacola and did not get a picture of it. We can only assume that it was Blue.
We have once more managed to cover a lot of ground, about 5000 miles. Of which 2500 were towing our trailer. We have travelled through 12 States, if only briefly for some of them. We have seen three mighty rivers, The Tennessee, The Ohio and The Mississippi. We have made new friends and visited old ones. Been through floods, but thankfully not encountered hurricanes. Highlights have been a trip on a stern wheeler on the Ohio, staying with the West's in Amish Country, seeing Gracelands, visiting the Lorraine Motel, following the Natchez Trace Trail and exploring New Orleans. We have attended bluegrass festivals at Raccoon Valley, Waldo and Sertoma. We have explored several important Civil war sites including Vicksburg, Shiloh. We have of course done much more than this, but to find out you will have to read the rest of the blog.
Our next trip will be in 2010 sometime. The blog address is roadblog60.blogspot.com, we hope that you have enjoyed following us on this trip and may want to drop in on us during our next trip, during which we hope to cross the Mid West Plains and see the Rocky Mountains.

Blood In The Aisles!

Well, we survived a great Soggy Bottom Weekend, and a couple of days with Marilee.
We then returned to Connie and Jim's on the Tuesday. We have spent the last 8 days relaxing and shopping, clearing and shopping, cleaning and SHOPPING. We have used this time to buy our Christmas presents.
On Sunday it looked like rain and it did rain. I tink about 2 inches in about an hour. The trailer was standing in about 3 inches of water. When the rain stopped the water disappeared within about 2 hours. Florida is built on one giant sand pit, so water just soaks away.
On Monday we went to Beals Outlet. This is because Monday is Senior Day - over 50's get 15% reduction, as well as this Sally had a 20% discount coupon which was burning a hole in her purse. The only problem with Seniors Day is that The Villages, where we shopped, is a purpose built community for retired people, so there are 100,000 retired people who live within 5 miles of Beal's Outlet Store and most of them were there on Monday. There was blood in the aisles! Little old ladies wielding machetes and sweeping people out of the way, using their trolley's like snowplough's. It took 20 minutes to stand in line to get to the check out. Mayhem! Now add in that it is Thanksgiving week and everyone was out getting their food sorted. Driving was crazy, parking was impossible, Walmart was gridlocked, and that was in the food aisle, not the carpark.
We have survived, though my arms are at least 6inches longer from carrying heavy bags.
We have now got to pack this stuff into 2 small suitcases. I talked over, with the checkout lady at Walmart, the possiblility of buying a suitcase at Walmart and returning it to ASDA when we got home. She thought this was a great idea.
So today is Wednesday and we have returned to Sertoma for our last Bluegrass concert for this trip. We have tucked ourselves away nicely on our site and are settling down for a quick nap before going out for a meal tonight.

In which I get a Touch Up at Sleepy Hollow

On the Wednesday, we moved down to Sertoma and had a very pleasant weekend. Connie’s cousin from California was visiting and we were able to meet them. As part of showing them around, on a perfect Friday morning, we went back to Sleepy Hollow, where we had a $5 breakfast (steak and eggs) by the lake and Jim, Don and Barbara took an airboat ride, just as Sally and I had done in February. They were very pleased that they not only survived the airboat ride but also saw a Water Moccasin snake (also known as a Cottonmouth) and Alligator. It was here that I came across another of those great examples of how our common language divides us as the very nice young waitress returned to our table (admittedly with a coffee jug) and asked, very personally as she leaned across the table in front of me “Would I like a touch up”. I could scarcely contain myself; until my friends pointed out that she merely wanted to top up my coffee cup.
Saturday was the day of the memorial for Larry Gibson. He was one of the founding fathers of Soggy Bottom and also Sertoma Youth ranch, as well as the manager for 17 years, though we did not know him.
We went to the memorial and watched as they performed a ‘Masons Funeral’, which was interesting. This was followed by speeches or informal comments by friends and family. This was quite moving, even though we didn’t know the man. In particular, a grandson spoke fondly of how they had frequently gone fishing and hunting together. There were many tears. We were then encouraged to go and jam together into the afternoon and night with Larry’s favourite description of playing, which was ‘to rip the tits off this one’ (one being the tune that was being played). Which, with some enthusiasm, we complied with.
Sunday. We have come to see Marilee for a couple of days before returning to Connie and Jim’s, where the van will have major surgery as we hopefully get running boards fitted, which I hope will make it much easier for Sally to get in and out of the van.

Connie and Jim's

Waldo was a great success - we really enjoyed it. We are parked on Connie's Back Lot. Today we did the washing, phew!! It was a big wash, at a launderette called Casa Da Lava. This afternoon we went over and hung out with Paula and Walt, at Brenny's brothers pastures(?) and Paula does look so well. Brand new curly hair and a tan. She has a nice new horse called Abby (Abigail).
Tomorrow we will go and look at Running Boards for the chevy. Ooh! just like Christmas!

From Hot Rod to Custom Cool Car

There comes a time when you have to try and get the best from your wheels. Now is the moment for our Chevy.
I am going to modify it. However I do not want to turn it into a Hot Rod, rather I want to turn it into a Custom Cool Car. While we have been away on a couple occasions the van has started to overheat. Now if we plan to take it to the Rockies, where the hills are steep and long and the weather is often hot then we do not want to spend a lot of tme at the roadside admiring the scenary while the van’s engine cools down. So I have been spending some time researching the best way to uprate the cooling system to cope with the extra load put on it by the weight of the trailer. Back in February someone recommended a guy in Palatka as being good with radiators (not difficult you would think). However, in the intervening months I have found out from GM that there is no way to upgrade the sytem without going to specialist (and expensive) parts. Waldo is only a bout 38,9 miles from Palatka, so I called the guy and he said to bring it over and he would look at it. His advice was to remove the radiator, physically check it was OK and then work from there.
So at 8.00 of Friday I took the van back over. He let the engine cool and then removed the radiator, it was only a thin one called a ‘single core’. He decided that he could find a fatter radiator core and rebuild the radiator, using my original radiator end pieces (which have the hose connections and fixings that hold it on to the body). He eventually found that a super heavy duty upgrade radiator for a 1994 Chevy Pick Up would fit. He managed to order it, have it delivered, dismantle both radiators, rebuild and re-fit to the car and have me on my way back to the trailer by 1.30. I thought that was pretty impressive. Of course the proof will be when we are on the long, lonely, hot, hill-climbs of the Rockies next year. I just hope that I can remain impressed.
The waiting time for the job gave me a chance to go and have a further look at Palatka, which we have passed through a couple of times and visited the ‘Famous Ravine Garden’. Previously documented,it is a bit like Saltburn back in England, though it is not by the sea. I found the historic district and the St Johns River. The most impressive architecture seemed to be a nice railway station. Which looked like it was once the centre of the booming tourist industry in the 20’s and 30’s.

Waldo

OK, I have now realized that we have been at Waldo now for 6 days, without updating the blog. It is funny how time just sort of runs along once you get to a place of routine. Our routine at a festival is to get up when we want, have breakfast, sit outside if it is warm, or visit, or just sit. Have lunch, then do something energetic like go to Walmart, or go to the concert, or visit, or sit. The evening is taken up by jamming, sometimes just a couple of hours, sometimes well into the early hours. Because Sally has not been so good this week there has been a lot of the ‘just sitting’ activity. As is Connie’s Way, we have eaten together all this week. We are so grateful because it makes a wonderful focal point to met with people and talk and sing together. The concerts have followed the traditional pattern of a Bluegrass Festival with concerts on Friday and Saturday afternoon and evening. There are a number of bands of differing popularity. Each band will perform one set in the afternoon and another in the evening. There have been some very good local bands, like The Palmetto’s and The Wilson Family as well as some nationally known bands. We have enjoyed Special Consensus, The Gary Waldrop Band and The Grascals who are probably one of the top bluegrass bands in the States at the moment, having won awards at the Bluegrass equivalent to the Oscars. The mix makes for a very enjoyable, but long, show, so you inevitably have to choose who you see. Pickin’ takes place around these concerts, Finding others who would rather pick than watch the bands (Grinnin’ it is called here) isn’t usually to difficult, but much Pickin’ goes on after the concerts have finished, which is about 10.30.
Connie always invites the bands to eat with her. At this festival we have had the pleasure of having The Gary Waldrop Band eating with us. They are very nice people from further north, Alabama and Georgia mostly. They joined us for food and then came on over and picked a bit after the concert on Saturday night, which was a lot of fun. They also have their bus parked right next to us, so we have been chatting a bit to them, and listening to them warming up before the concerts.
There is a Gospel day today with concerts up until 3.00, when we all pack up and go home.
The only extra this time has been to get the van souped up and modified! As you will read later

Blackwater for Halloween

(Retrospective from our visit to Blackwater in 2010). We have arrived at Blackwater River State Park and have managed to get one of the last sites available. The new sites are quite big, however not big enough that I could leave the van on the trailer. It was here that we realised that it was Saturday night and Halloween. The place was swarming with kids! But it was a lovely atmosphere. many people had decortd their sites with lights and pumpkins, and even pumpkin lanterns. I zoomed out to the 'local' shop (only 5 miles away) to buy some 'ket' (as the kids in Middlesbrough schools used to say) to hand out as treats for the kids as they wandered round. As darkness fell so the campsite lit up with the decorations and there was a continuous background noise of distant shouting and laughing, every now and then a group of kids (usually with parents) would come round past the site and we handed out sweets, though we had a bag of eyeballs (grapes) and fingers (baby carrots) to dare the kids to put their hand in to collect one. Then Sally and I had a wander round the campground to look at all the decorations, saying 'hi' to most and visiting with some to be offered the snacks/buffet they had put out for people. It was a very pleasant and friendly evening deep in the middle of the forest (which a lot of parents obviously used to their advantage for ghost stories).
Next morning we hitched up the wagon and moved on to Three Rivers State Park and spent a couple of nights there before moving on to Connie and Jim's for the Waldo Festival.

Where's that Squirrel?

Yes its a Pascagoula Day. We travelled along I10 to the grand metropolis of Pascaguoula, the very same town made famous by Ray Stevens in his record, which can be seen on You Tube . This song was the basis for Connie's Skit at her party in 2008, which still makes me laugh. Oh dear, that has set me off looking at all those other Ray Stevens videos that are on YouTube: The streak, Bridget the Midget, Gitarzan, Ahab the Arab. Then there are at least a dozen more, oh my goodness. AND he is still going, The New Battle of New Orleans is particularly poignant, as we have just been there, and Katrina is still the biggest thing in Louisiana (The reliability of the Canal Street Ferry and the Pascagoula Squirrel Revival [even though that is Mississippi] excepted). This is just a quick overnighter though and we plan to move on to Blackwater State Park later this morning (Saturday).

Trains, Planes and Automobiles AND FERRIES

So,the reccomendation of the helpful ranger in the State Park is to drive to Algiers Pier on what is called the West Side of New Orleans (even though, because of a bend in the river it is to the south of New Orleans) (across the river) and take the Ferry, leaving your car in a car park which is very cheap, as opposed to paying a lot for parking in New Orleans.
So, Sally and I thought we would try this, it would be a great adventure.
Bear in mind that it is actually quicker to go acros the river on the freeway than it is to find your way through the backstreets to the ferry. Well, we eventually found the ferry terminal, called Algiers Pier, just in time to miss the 11.00 ferry, so we had to wait until 11.30. We could not board the ferry because we were told that a rope was caught round the propellor and they were sending down a driver. I thought he was called the captain, but never mind. Fortunately the ferry left quite quickly afterwards. It took about 10 minutes to cross the Mississippi to New Orleans (New Orleans proper is called the East Side, even though because of the the river bend it is actually to the north of the the West Side). In fact, when you look on the map, because of the the bend in the river the ferry route actually goes in a westerly direction to get from the West Side (which is to the south) to the East Side (which is to the north).

Any way, we then had a good time in New Orleans. Today we were going to do Bourbon Street, perhaps the most famous of the the French Quarter streets. What a let down. It was completly full of 'Kiss Me Quick' gift shops, bars (sleezy) and expensive poor quality food. Just like Blackpool, or Atlantic city. However, when we turned off Bourbon Street, we were once more enchanted by the houses with their pretty balconies, many of them decorated for Halloween, or with plants. We had a very pleasant lunch in a little French cafe.

The main event of the afternoon was going to the museum on Jackson Square to see an exhibition about Mardi Gras parades and in particular the Zulu Krewe. It was fascinating. The Krewes are very complex social networks, with all sorts of formalised ritual (social activities, not religious rituals). The parade participants have all sorts of specific roles, again heavily ritualised, from lamp holders up to the Kings (Rexes). They have fascinating histories. The Zulu's were the first Black Krewe to be accepted on the main parade route, I think in about 1967, though they are celebrating their centenery year. Their history reflects the slow changes in Civil Rights. Louis Armstrong was the Zulu King in 1949, the year in which I was born.
Every aspect of carnival seems to interweave to create a complete social experience, quite fascinating (yes I know I have used that word three times). They had several costumes on show - they were absolutely brilliant.
Incidently it was in New Orleans in 1892 that Homer Plessy carried out the first act of civil disobedience by sitting in the white only area of a street car (way before Rosa Parks). There was a famous court case: Plessy v. Ferguson, unfortunately he lost, the result was that the doctine of 'Separate but equal' became accepted, setting back civil rights 40 years and determining the pattern for the treatment of blacks for the next 50 years.

We now started back towards the ferry, this time walking along Royal Street, between Bourbon and Chartres. We found that this road had been closed to vehicles so that street musicians could perform. We stood amazed as we listened to a an unamed band play and sing real jazz, while a couple did some brilliant Lindy Hop dancing (we think it was Lindy Hop). We thoroughly enjoyed this, excllent entertainment.
We eventually arrived back at the Canal Street Ferry Terminal, having just missed the 4.00 ferry.
NOW THIS IS WHERE IT ALL GOES PEAR SHAPED
Only to be told, by rumour, as because as there is no charge for the ferry there are no personnel there, that the ferry had broken down and had not turned up. There was no sign to say, it will be coming in an hour, or tomorrow or whatever, it just stopped. So we had no idea if it would arrive in five minutes, or never run again.
So we waited for a bit, getting cold, getting hungry and no information - all these things lead to stress.
So we made the decision that we would have to get a taxi to take us to the other ferry terminal where our car was.
We went to find a taxi, spoke to a hustler we had talked to the day before. "What, the ferry is not running" with incredulity. He suggested a hotel to get a taxi. (now 5.00)
We went to the Double Tree and explained to the porter why we needed a taxi, his response was "What, the Ferry is not running" and then he explained this to the House Manager who exclaimed "What, the ferry is not running" with incredulity. They phoned for a taxi. Yes, of course he asked for a taxi with a lift, which could carry an electric wheelchair.
Taxi arrived. Yes, of course was an ordinary cab. Now here we ran into the French mode of the New Orleanians, which had been threatening for some time, but not actually reared its ugly head. When asked how he would put the chair in the car the taxi driver quite naturally, as though he had been doing it for generations lifted his shoulders and arms in the true Gallic way to express his total incompetence in the situation. He looked from Sally's chair to his trunk and back again. He then radioed for a bigger taxi, though he said that the bigger taxi did not have a lift, but it was big enough to take the chair! We mentioned we needed the taxi because the ferry was not working. "What, the Fairry ees not running" he said with incredulity. He then made noises with his radio and told us that dispatch had another job for him, but the bigger van would be coming. He then, somewhat comically, said "I must go now" and made to exit very quickly from the hotel forecourt, only he did not move. He then had to get out rather sheepishly and explain that it was stuck in Park and he had to rock the car backwards and forwards to unstick it. A bit of a Clouseau Moment.
By now it was obvious that there are no taxi's in New Orleans that are able to transport an electric wheelchair, So plan B - I would take a taxi back across to the Algiers Pier ferry terminal, then I would drive back in our car and collect Sally. So I left Sally in the hotel lobby and hailed an ordinary cab saying that I wanted him to take me to Algiers Pier, wherepon he very helpfully said that I could take the ferry, so I told him that though this was a good plan, which I had thought of already, unfortunately the ferry was not working, which was why I was now having to take taxicab to collect my car which was at the Algiers Ferry Terminal. "Mon Duiex, What, the fairry ees not running?" he said with incredulity. I wearily repeated that was why I needed to take a cab.
With a bit of help on directions we crossed the mighty bridge over the Mighty Mississippi, which I have now found out is called the CCC bridge and I retrieved our car. Now of course I was at the terminal on the other side of the river. I spied a couple of people waiting for the ferry and said I was going back to the other terminal to pick up my wife, would they like a lift round. They very gratefully accepted, because they worked in New Orleans and would be late, because the ferry was not running. Though it actually took some time for them to understand why I would be driving my car from one ferry terminal to the other, when I could catch the ferry (except that it wasn't working).
I now returned from the West Side, to the East Side (which is north of the West Side)along Route 90 East, though I was travelling westwards across the CCC bridge (which I now remember stands for Crescent City Connection). I must admit that the girls I was giving a lift to paid the toll fee. I collected Sally from the hotel and we drove home without further adventure (apart from following an armadillo through the campground).
Now the car park in New Orleans on Chartre is $10 for all day parking. The Ferry would save us a lot of inconvenience and be much cheaper, as it was free, though you need to leave your car in the car park at the ferry because it is not safe to leave it on the road there.
So, to save $10, plus $1 bridge toll ($11)
We paid $5 to park at Algiers Pier
$20 for a taxi
$2 for the toll for the taxi
Total $27 and three extra hours travelling time
To save us $10 parking fee and the hassle of parking in New Orleans.

Today I mentioned to the park ranger who had made the original recommendation that the ferry had been out of action. "What, the ferry was not running?" she said with incredulity.
In all of this we have learned
1. Don't use public transport if you don't really need to, it probably won't work.
2. The New Orleans Ferry has an impregnable reputation for always running.

New Orleans on Tuesday.

Because we now have up to five days here, we want to take things gently. So we decided that we would just drive in to New Orleans, check out the lie of the land, drop into the Convention/visitor center, have a coffee or a light lunch and then come back and relax at the trailer. Ha! Had spent a lot of time online looking to see what New Orleans had to offer. They had a production of Cats going on. Ooh, an orchestral version of Star Wars, with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Anthony Daniels (C3PO) narrating as well as lights and action, sounded great, only problem, Minimum $50. No not for us.
We drove successfully into New Orleans across the Miss Bridge, right to the Convention center. It is HUGE, there was no way that we would find a visitor center in there, so we parked the van ($12 for up to 4 hours) and started walking.
I really love those little incidents that just happen in the States, ‘Vignettes of Serendipity’ I think I shall call them. Well today we had three of them.
Incident number one. We started by walking up Convention Center Boulevard and then onto Poydras St, which is parallel to Canal St. The street crossings are a bit tricky here, so we were waiting on a little traffic island for a break in the traffic, when this female stands in the middle of the street, pretending to blow a whistle, stops the traffic and ushers us across. We are all laughing. There are three of them and us two. Well we started walking up Poydras St and before you know it we feel like we are old friends with these people. We are swapping family histories and Betty was telling us she has just bought a property in Natchez and we had a great time. They worked in the courthouse on Poydras St, so they told us a good place for lunch – the Commerce. These people were so nice, it was just lovely to meet them in the middle of New Orleans.
We duly found the Commerce. Well you would have missed it if you didn’t know exactly what you were looking for. It was a good old fashioned diner (not the right architecture, but the atmosphere was there), Sally and I shared a beef Po Boy and coffee. It was a great place, full of local people.
We continued our exploration and crossed over Canal St (I always remember Canal St as it was the place where the news interviewers stood and watched the flood waters coming up the street during Katrina). We walked along Chartres Ave, right into the middle of the French Quarter, a narrow street full of old houses, all with their characteristic wrought iron balcony, lots of cafes and restaurants. Lots of side streets, again with the houses having balconies. We continued until we got to Jackson Square, where the street opens out into a small park. Here there was a typical New Orleans jazz band playing, sax, trombone, suzaphone (like a tuba, but it wraps round you) and an assortment of percussion. It was great just to stand and watch them. We moved on. We looked at the street artists.
Incident number two. I noticed that there were a number of people who sat at card tables, covered with ornaments, a bit like a table top sale, so I started looking at some of them. One lady had a number of very nice rocks and crystals. She was heavily tattooed. I started talking to her, only to find that in fact she was a Tarot Card reader, who would read my future in her cards (apparently the standard charge is $20.00). She was not at all pushy, so I stood and we talked a bit more. She told me that the things on the table sort of said something about the person doing the reading. She obviously felt that these stones and crystals said something about her. I noticed one polished rock had an ammonite embedded in it. So I pointed it out to her saying how much I liked it. She asked what an ammonite was, so I explained about it being a fossil many millions of years old. I also pointed out a belemnite which was in the same rock. She was amazed, she had had this rock for years and never noticed the fossils! She wanted to know how old they were, so I started explaining how the fossils got there. I then talked about her other crystals, she had some nice calcite, a big black quartz crystal and some hornblende. So I said that having read her rocks that would be $20.00 and we all had a good laugh.
We moved on round Jackson Square, feeling that it was time for a coffee, when we saw Café Du Monde in front of us. Large building, looked like a one time market (slave market perhaps?), open on three sides, lots of small tables crammed in, lots of people, lots of white powder. That could only mean one thing – Beignets. Oh Yes. This café only sold one item of food – beignets, fresh with piles of icing sugar. Sally had coffee, I had hot chocolate, so that I could dunk them in the chocolate, then back into the icing sugar, then into my mouth. Oh they were scrummy.
Incident number three. Lady at the next table, sophisticated looking, perhaps Japanese, sitting alone. We start talking and amazingly she plays the clarinet in the Philedelphia Orchestra – she is on a break from rehearsals as she is performing in the Star Wars extravaganza. She was fascinating. I never cease to be amazed at who we meet in America.
After our excellent afternoon coffee we walk back to the car. Our short, quiet introduction to New Orleans turned out to be a really good day. Our impression of New Orleans is that it is an exciting place, lots of things happening. It doesn’t seem to depend on tourism for its existence (which I felt Nashville and parts of Memphis did).
Looking forward to going again tomorrow. This time we will take the Ferry! And look at Bourbon Street.

Monday Decision time!

Having reached Louisiana, we now realize that there is a lot more to see here than we have time for. So we have decided that we will skip the Arcadian, Bayou, Cajun and wetland areas and head straight for New Orleans. This area will then form the basis for the start of our next trip. So rather than crossing the Mississipi, we travelled back to the East until we hit I55 at McComb, where we called in at the local Walmart for supplies and a Subway lunch. We then went south to New Orleans, trying not to be seasick on the way. The road surface of I55 is made up of short concrete sections, which make a merry kdoink, kdoink, kdoink as you drive over the joints. However, when you do it with an 8000lb trailer, it comes out like kerbang! Kerbang! Kerbang!, as the trailer bounces across each joint. Now lets see! 93 miles, each concrete pad is about 20 feet, that’s 250 to the mile, that about 25000 Kerbang’s we had to endure (oh alright there were one or two tarmac sections). Then we thought it would be great to arrive in New Orleans in style, by crossing the Pontchartrain Lake, as there is a toll bridge across it. The bridge is 27 miles long! When you start on the bridge, you cannot see the other side. It is wider than our English channel! Although its only about 15 feet deep. Guess what, it’s a bridge made of concrete sections, so 27 more miles of Kerbang! Kerbang! Kerbang!
We survived the concrete roads and found a nice State Park in a place called Westwega, about 3 miles from the centre of New Orleans. Only problem is it is on the wrong side of the river. Now there are two river crossings at New Orleans. The western bridge, called the Huey Long Bridge is high and narrow and Long (Sally’s fear of heights nearly made it a Huey as well). We brought the trailer across that during rush hour, one side of the trailer inches from a steel kerb, the other side across the white line of the two lanes, and cars still passed us. The Eastern bridge, lovingly called the ‘Miss Bridge’, is a long viaduct that sweeps round to a toll bridge and is the one that the news programmes showed buses and the army moving along during Katrina. You get a great view of central New Orleans as you can see the Superbowl and the skyline. You immediately drop down into the French Quarter of New Orleans, beside the huge Convention Center. This is the way that we would go into New Orleans on our first adventure there.

Loess and Lyell

You can skip this as it is really my ramblings about geology.
Loess and Lyell, not an old couple, not a bank, but a coming together in Natchez, which I had not forseen, but which I found fascinating.
Back when I did geography as an A Level and again when I did Earth Science at college the name of Charles Lyell was inextricably linked to the development of modern geology and geomorphology. He had made the now obvious, but then almost heretic, cornerstone observation that the present is the key to the past. The geological processes we see happening now were the ones that shaped the earth millions, even billions, of years ago. Charles Lyell was a geologist in the early 19th Century. He could afford to travel the world looking at rocks. His observations and theories he set out in a series of books called Principles of Geology and later Elements of Geology. He was very influential amongst natural scientists of the day. He gave Darwin the first book of his Principles of Geology just as he was setting sail in The Beagle. This book influenced Darwin and helped crystallise his ideas on evolution (though paradoxically Lyell did not accept until much later that man was the product of the same principles that he defined for geology).
Although I had looked in detail at his work for A Level, I had of course completely forgotten all of it, until we drove down the Natchez Trace Parkway and started to see information about Loess, which is wind blown material, a product of glacial erosion.
In America there are large deposits of Loess which form the surface rocks right down the central states. In Mississippi State the deposits form a ridge of higher land to the east of the Mississippi river. The loess is soft, almost like clay, yet has the property of being able to form almost vertical cliffs. This shows itself in the topography by the appearance of deep gullies and ravines (up to 75 feet, not Grand canyon proportions) cut into the steep line of hills which forms the east bank of the Mississippi. Vicksburg is built on these hills as is Natchez. In Vicksburg this unique material enabled Pemberton to build very strong defences round the town against the Grant’s invading Union forces. However, the soft nature of the ground also enabled Grant to build his siege trenches very quickly and very close to the Confederate army. It even allowed for digging of tunnels under the defences to plant mines to blow up the defences.
While in Natchez that I realised that Charles Lyell had been there in 1842. \It as here that he saw the link between the Loess deposits and the river, as he had seen the same thing on the Rhine in Germany. This further confirmed to him his Theory of Uniformatism (Present key to the past). The Loess, which is wind blown, rather than water borne, seems to have been blown across the plains until it reaches the river, where for some reason, possibly higher humidity, it drops and builds into a clay like deposit over 120 feet thick. This means that it forms the first higher ground as you move from the west to the east across the Mississippi region. It was an important factor in the siteing of Natchez, as south of Natchez the deposits fade to the East, so Natchez is the first high ground on the Mississippi. It was equally important at Vicksburg, as it produced the high ground which enabled Vicksburg to dominate the Mississippi River.
Further de javu occurred when we visited the Grand Indian Village, as Lyell had described visiting the village in one of his books, and there we were standing in the same spot that this famous English Scientist had stood 167 years before.

Loess and Lyell

Melrose House

Today we plan to visit one of the Antebellum mansions, Melrose House
We had a great time, here some pictures we took


The house was really stunning. Talk about how the rich lived in pre civil war days!! The gold in the 'green' room is actually real gold leaf. Most of the furniture is original and very beautiful. Original oil cloth can be seen on the floors and most curtains have been reproduced exactly as they were when the house was first built.The china was all English fine porcelaine. The house was built, around 1840, by a Yankee who moved south and who owned several plantations. He owned slaves - around 40 to run the house and grounds - don't know how many in the plantations. The house was built when he married a Southern Belle. It was decorated and furnished with the best that money could buy and it has been restored to as it was pre civil war. You can see the slave quarters, outside kitchen, dairy, laundry room, stables, carriage barn and slave toilets all behind the main house. The house was set in 140 acres of grounds - some laid out to formal gardens - and you can imagine what it must have been like to live this sort of life style. The family only lived there during the winter. In the summer, they travelled North, often going abroad to Europe to avoid the heat, humidity and mosquitoes. Rather like snow birds in reverse!!

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.

Vicksburg: Town under siege

On Thursday morning, we toured the National Park Battleground which had a small visitor centre, with a video and a nice map with lots of LED's that lit up during a narration. We then took the driving tour. This graphically showed how close the two forces came to each other, the extent of the earthworks and trenches, the sheer size of the two opposing lines of engagement and gave some good information about what happened during those six weeks between May 19th and July 4th, when the union forces laid siege to Vicksburg before Pemberton surrendered to Grant. It was very interesting, though, as usual with battlegrounds, a little difficult to get a coherent picture of what happened on the ground. One could see how, once encircled, that the town was at the mercy of the bombardments from the Union. I don't knnow how it survived for six weeks.
What was most interewting was the USS Cairo. This is a complete Union Ironclad, that was sunk by a torpedo (more like a mine) in the Yazoo River in 1863. It was raised in 1960 and reconstructed, with a modern day 'ghost structure'to support it and show what it really looked like. This enabled us to see just how big it was. We could also walk round inside and see the original steam engines, look out through the gun ports and seen how everything was laid out. It was fascinating. Many thousands of artifacts from the ship were also recovered and on display, from weapons, to ships equipment, to personal belongings of crew and officers. It is a wonderful time capsule from 1863. It weighed 880 tons, with its 2 inch cast iron plating. It sank in 12 minutes, but no one was killed. As a ship it looked very inefficient, not much more than a big barge with a big sternwheeler hidden inside. Even at 179 feet long it was difficult to get everything inside it. Guns, steam boilers, coal, ammunition, engines, sternwheels, let alone crews quarter There appeared to be one main deck inside, which housed the guns. The middle was dominated by a huge steam reservoir which was use to divert steam to the two engines, the auxiliary engine or the steam driven capstan, which was used to do the heavy work, such as lifting anchor, or moving guns. It was designed to be used on the river. It could make 6 knots, having seen the Missisippi in October, I don't think it could have made much ground upstream. For a big river, the Mississippi flows very fast. A marvellous sight, well worth the visit.

Vicksburg

Wednesday
Sally has still not fully recovered from her recent relapse, so we thought it best to have a very gentle day and take the trailer over to Vicksburgh (we had planned to drive as a day trip). It is only 50 miles, so once we were packed up it was a fairly easy drive.
We eventually found a site in the RV park attached to the casino. Not a very attractive site. Very busy, people coming and going all the time (I mean all the time, even through the night), too noisy. Anyway, it is clean and feels safe.
Thursday
Today we have explored Vicksburg. Vicksburg is a funny sort of a town, totally dominated by the line of fortifications built around it. These are now a National Park and left for pertetuity. They are large earthworks which form an arc to the east and stretch from the shore of the Yazoo in the north, to the shore of the Mississippi in the south. The town is built on a bluff overlooking the river. The shoreline has a number of small casinos spread along it. As we drove through, there seemed to be many old houses, some in good repair, others dilapidated. But it was not easy to find a heart to the town. The shops and administration seemed to be elsewhere. Washington Ave, from Clay to Grove St seemed to have the most life. They are an area that has been renovated and includes the oldest Coca Cola bottling plant in the world museum (don't ask how, when C C was developd in Georgia, as we did not go into it). We did find a delightful little drop-in coffee bar, called Highway 61, tucked away down one end of this area. They were very friendly and sold a coffee called 'Dancing Goat Coffee', which promised much, but was actually just a nice cup of coffee. We had a bagel as well, as it was past lunch time. (we toured the battle site in the morning, I will come back to that).
A number of people just sat around - they played cards, or used their laptop, or read one of the hundreds of coffee table books available. I read a brilliant one on the design of the Airstream. Cost us less than $5.00, inc. refills. Thoroughly recommend it. The weather had taken a turn for the worse, so we stayed a bit longer. After that we toured round to look at the famous antebellum houses. They were very pretty, but somehow forlorn, perhaps we still had civil war monument depression from the morning, realising what the people in these houses had been through while under siege. We stopped off at a Thrift shop, because they always have a huge selection of second hand books. Found a couple, inc one on the National Parks, published 1959.

Jackson

We drove into Jackson. The weather was beautiful, crisp, clear, sunny and not too warm.
Jackson is the State Capital of Mississippi. However, like Frankfort in KY it is not too big. It does however have two Capitol buildings. The older one was replaced in about 1920 because of structural problems and water damage as a result of a passing hurricane and it having been outgrown by the administration. Rather than knock it down, they have developed it as a museum about itself! It also tells the story of how the elected houses work. It was very interesting. Before we went in we needed lunch, so I just stopped a random guy, who was photographing the building. We started talking and it turns out that his family had made the lime that was used in the mortar when the original capitol was built in the 1840's. He also directed us to Hal and Mel's, a bar round the corner in an old warehouse, where you could get great seafood. We had a very pleasnat lunch. Sally and I tried Gumbo for the first time. It is a spicy soup of shrimp and chicken and vegetables poured over rice (at least this one was), which we had with a crawfish (freshwater shrimp) Po Boy (open sandwich). We loved this - also loved the restroom which was done out as a graffiti style tribute to Elvis, with lots of quotes about Elvis drawn on the wall (if you can't beat them join them must be their motto).

While we were in the museum, there was a rowdy group of kids from a high school. One young lad held the restroom door open for Sally, which was actually a corridor. He then had to go to the next door to help Sally into the restroom, whereupn he was liberally chastised by one of the girls for going into the ladies restroom. Once we got talking it was great fun. They were amazed that we would come all the way from England to see Mississippi (they were from, what looked to be a poor part of, Columbia, MS), but they told us of their trips to Las Vegas, Atlanta and one had even been to Italy, though he couldn't remember much about it.
After our trip into the Old Capitol, we found a lovely little coffee shop and had a great cup of coffee (Sally has now taken to drinking coffee American style, black with cream and sweetners, which is great as it is a lot cheaper that the capuccino style she has drunk in the past.
As it was our anniversary, we stopped on the way back to the trailer for a steak at a Logan's Steak house. We had a great day and finished it with a romantic stroll down to the lakeside as the sunset ofver the lake (See pics on previous posting)

Restful Ramblings on the Natchez Trace Trail

We have been slowly moving down the Natchez Trace Parkway. It is very pleasant, if you like trees. The Parkway is a limited access road with a speed limit of 50 m.p.h., so it is very easy motoring. There are frequent stops for ancient sites and views, Indian stuff, Civil War stuff, settler stuff, even French stuff. We stayed at Davis Lake for 3 nights to allow time for Sally to recuperate from a flare up of her CFS/ME. It was so beautiful and the weather was improving all the time. A family of eagles lived across the lake, unfortunately I did not get an good close ups.
Leaving Davis Lake, we travelled on Sunday to Jeff Busby Camp. This is a campground with minimum facilites, but no charge either. It was a pleasant evening in the woods. I even managed to get a small campfire going, even though everything was very wet. By now we had clear blue skies and pleasant temperatures in the high 60's.

Mississippi is a very pleasant state. They grow lots of soy, cotton and sweet potato. Unfortunately the really wet Fall has all but destroyed the sweet potato harvest. We also saw a lot of soy fields underwater. It is quite flat and there are lots of swamp areas.
On Monday we continued, making our earliest ever start as we left the Jeff Busby campground at just after 9.30!!!.
We stopped for lunch at a picnic ground river overlook imaginatively called River Bend. Fortunately, there was a local on hand to explain the meaning behind the old american name. It seems (he told us very seriously) it is called River Bend because it was on a bend in the river! Sure enough as we looked at the river it was indeed on a bend! Mind you we were stupid enough, or patronising enough, to say "Oh yes, the river does bend here". That does not detract from the fact that it was a very beautiful sight.
Talking to another local (Don't ask me, they just start talking to us), he said that there were many alligators in this river (it is actually the Pearl River) and how disappointing it was that we were not here in September for the Gator Season. So we, like idiots, asked what the Gator Season was. Believe it or not they actually fish for alligators using rod and line. It is controlled (so he says) by license. There is a ballot and if you win you can take two gators, one less than 8 feet and one more than 8ft. He mentioned the state record had just been broken be somene landing a 13ft gator. It seems they use stuff like they use for marlin fishing. But Marlin don't bite back.
The river opened out into a large, very large, huge lake, which was about 20 miles long. We ran along side it. Eventually we crossed the dam at the end, called the spillway, and arrived at our destination for the night, Timber Lake Campground. We would stay here while we explored Jackson, capital of Mississippi.

The Natchez Trace Trail at last

We have now eventually hit the Natchez Trace Trail Parkway. We had a lovely cruise yesterday, stopping off at a couple of the places on the way. It is very pretty. There are lots of trees and many of them are changing to Fall colours. Because Sally was not feeling well, we stopped at a campground quite early, Davis Lake. Which is just south of Tupelo (Elvis birthplace). I am so glad we did because it is beautiful. We have a lakeside site with open views of the lake on three sides of us. It is very quiet. Wonderfully, there is a family of eagles on the other side of the Lake and I have watched them flying around the lake. I am even now awaiting the opportunity to get some really good pics. of them. Unfortunately the light had not been good so far.

Shiloh and Unexpected Company

We are camped at Pickwick Landing, a State Park next to the Tennessee River. As soon as we arrived we met up with some folks from Missouri. They were a real laugh. Three couples, Orlo and Karen, Otis and Dot and Dennis and ?, oops I have forgotten the name, please forgive me when you read this. Orlo and Otis were retired teachers - enough said. When we rolled into the campround, which had 4 sites out of 48 occupied, we looked round and saw these people. I rolled the window down to say 'hi'. Orlo greeted us and asked if we would mind not using site 18 (next to them) as they had some friends who were yet to arrive, so of course I said I was very disappointed as all day I had been looking forward to staying on site 18 and it was very depressing that with an almost completely empty park that we couldn't pull in next to them. He responded by asking us if we would like to come down for a glass of wine at 5.00, so we did. We had a great time. These six people, and us, all talked at the same time, breaking into each others conversations. It was bedlam, liberally lubricated by several bottles of wine. WE LOVED IT. Wine time stretched into going to the local lodge for 'Crazy Chicken' night, all you could eat chicken for $7.99. We had a great evening, talking about everything from education, to politics, history, differences between Brits and Americans. Mostly humerous rather than serious (well I hope they were not being serious either). It was another example of the wonderful people that we have met on our travels - we have been very blessed.

Yesterday, we visited Shiloh. This is the place where one of the bloodiest of the Civil War battles took place. The park looked very similar to a number of other battlefields that we have visited. We watchd an interesting, but really old film of the battle. It is probably the only civil war documentary that pre-dates the civil war! Unfair, however it was made in 1956, and looks it.
On the one hand, I am not sure why we visit these sites as they usually promotes the same feelings about the pointlessness of war. That it is not glorious, as they would have us believe. That the events on the ground were the sharp end of machinations by politicians and industrial giants, which had very little to do with those great ideals that history has used to dim the carnage with.
On the other hand, my curiosity wants to know more about what happened and what drove these men. There are real stories of courage and honour on both sides that should be respected, remembered and passed on to the next generations.
I think that the thing that is different about the Civil War was that it was the first war that was extensively recorded. Not just newspapers, but journals, logs and letters. The opinion of the common man became available to all. Also the views of both sides are of equal validity.
Today Sally has not been so well and has stayed pretty much in bed, so I have been out and about shopping, getting the oil changed in the van and doing a stint at the launderette. Tomorrow we move on to the Natchez Trace Parkway proper!

The Meaning of Memphis

Sunday in the States always takes a slower pace. This is certainly true of Memphis. Having been tired out yesterday at Graceland we have stayed an extra day in Memphis to look at the Blues quarter and the National Civil Rights Museum.
We took a leisurely breakfast and drove into Memphis. We parked on the corner of Union Ave and Front Street and walked along Main Street, which is pedestrianised, apart from the trams, to Beale Street. Beale Street is the road which is jam packed with blues bars and music shops and tourist traps. We joined in the relaxed atmosphere as we looked in bars and music shops, listening to the blues music that drifted out from each one. Past B.B. Kings, on up to Silky O Sullivan’s. We stopped for a coffee and chicken sandwich on the patio of Silky O’Sullivan’s and listened to a blues duo playing. Blues is a great sound and the 12 bar is nice and easy to follow, it is especially good live. The air was quite warm as we sat in the shade of some large trees. Looking up we saw they had some real, live goats basking in the sun up a helter skelter type of ramp, rising up out of a grassed area at the side of the patio. A sign said ‘Beware. Irish High Diving Goats’!!!! (Only in America!!!!) It was a very pleasant time.
We then continued along Beale Street looking in more shops. We returned to the van via St Martin’s Street, passing the Peabody Hotel, and down Union Street, passing the Old Cotton Exchange. We noticed many examples of Art Nouveau and Art Deco ornamentation on the buildings. Strangely enough, most of the ornamentation appeared to be at the top of the tall buildings!
We then drove the short distance to the National Civil Rights Museum (NCLM) at 350 Mulberry Street. This museum is on the site of, and preserves, the Lorraine Motel. It also owns and has preserved the buildings opposite, which are of similar historical importance.

Lorraine Motel? What happened there? What could have happened in an insignificant Motel in the downtown area of Memphis? Specifically outside Room 306. On April 4th, on April 4th 1968 at 5.45 p.m.? This is the place and time that Dr Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. As such, it is a shrine for the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The Motel was bought by the NCLM and gutted on the inside to house the story of the civil rights movement in the USA, though leaving the exterior and some rooms as it was when the assassination took place. We toured the museum and went to the room where Dr Martin Luther King had stayed. We could see the exact place on the balcony where he was shot. We also went across the road to a lodging house where we could visit the room from which James Earl Ray used a rifle to assassinate Dr Martin Luther King (it is interesting to note that James Earl Ray was actually identified and arrested by the British Police when he tried to pass through Heathrow airport some 56 days after the assassination). It was a very moving experience. Difficult to put into words those feelings.

We are however starting to link together some of the important episodes in the Civil Rights Movement in America. We are saddened by the pain and suffering that had to be endured by so many to make such small gains in the road to equality between black and white people. We are also sad to be left with the feeling, as we travel round this proud and beautiful country, that for many integration is a concept that is accepted, but is not fully embraced, as a universal right.

Saturday - Graceland

(Pictures to follow, when we get more bandwidth)
We drove the Interstate through Memphis to get to Graceland, dropping off on Union St to get some cash from an ATM. We noticed that the place looked quite run down and drove with the doors locked (they don’t lock automatically on our bus). A total contrast to the homestead country, where I had felt that every time I locked the car it was an insult to anyone around - that I would think they would take something.
Graceland is in two parts. The commercial stuff, Heartbreak Hotel, the ticket office, museums, shops and café’s are on one side of Elvis Presley Boulevard and Graceland is on the other side of the road, to be reached by shuttle busses.
We started in the commercial sector, bought our tickets and then wandered through the Elvis Car Museum, admired amongst others, his two Rolls Royce, stretched Mercedes, 1955 Pink Cadillac, 1956 purple Cadillac Eldorado (convertible) and several Harley Davison’s. Quite an impressive collection.
We then went through the Elvis in Hollywood Museum, saw clips and memorabilia of many of his films and read some of the background to them, very interesting.
We now went on the bus to Graceland. The front lawn and drive were very impressive and the house front is very well proportioned, what struck us both is that it is not a very big house, certainly not mansion sized.
We went in through the front door, to the right is a very nice formal front room with big white leather chairs and couches. To the left is a nicely proportioned dining room, giving access to a very large kitchen, with every modern convenience (for the 70’s), beyond that, to the back of the house, there was a living room. Also on this floor was his parent’s bedroom.
We went downstairs to the basement, which had been done out as a den, with three T.V.s, couches and a bar, done in bright yellow and blue (very similar to the colour scheme for our first kitchen, also designed in the 70’s). There was also a games room with a pool table.
Back upstairs there was a large extension added to the side which was called the Jungle Room. It was indeed decorated in a jungle theme, with a lot of basic varnished wood furniture from Hawaii.
From there we walked across the yard to his office, then to The Trophy room, where there was more memorabilia about his rise to fame, then a long corridor which was completely lined with his gold disks, very impressive. There was then displays of the different periods of his career, his marriage to Priscilla and his big tours in the 70’s, with some of his costumes.
This led on to the Racquetball building (squash to you and me). Here he had another social area with piano and pinball machines.
This area opened into the squash court. This had been set out as a tribute to his career. The walls were completely covered with more gold and silver disks and awards. There was a display of costumes from his Aloha Concert in Hawaii and some video of the concert. It was very impressive that one man could have such an impact on the entertainment world.
The final part of Gracelands was the Garden of Meditation, a tasteful area where Elvis’s grave is, alongside other members of his family.
On returning to the ticket area we had a look at his aircraft. The Boeing 707 was very luxuriously appointed, with the wash basins lined with 24 carat gold leaf.
All in all, we very much enjoyed the whole experience and it was well worth the drive to come and see it.
We returned to the trailer, via Arkansas and Beale St, but intend to return there on Sunday to see the Civil Rights Museum at the hotel where Martin Luther King was assassinated.
Stopped off at a Chilli’s for a steak dinner to round off a great day.

Things That Go Bump In The Night

We had a leisurely morning, sharing breakfast with the West’s and made ready to move on. It was now time to fulfil one of our major goals – Graceland. We drove along the I40 and found a nice State Park called Shelby Forest. We arrived and set up, beating off the myriads of mosquitoes. Not a brilliant campground, but it is convenient.
One amusing incident happened during the evening. Sally was sitting in the dinette area working on the laptop, when suddenly she heard a scrabbling noise underneath the trailer. Could it be raccoons, skunk, or possum? The noise was quite loud above our music. Could it be squirrels trying to get back in through the slide out? Could it be a bear (not very likely, but you do think of that sort of thing when it is very close and very dark outside. Nothing for it, I would have to go and look, and scare it away (unless it scared me away). So I collected my trusty jack handle and with a powerful flashlight bravely went out through the door into the night to confront this grizzly bear, or poisonous snake which was wrapping itself round the underside of our trailer. On looking, tentatively at first, then more closely, nothing was to be seen!! Yet the noise continued. Had it eaten its way through the walls! There was now definitely nothing under the trailer. I had looked in all the dark and nasty places. I came back in, the noise was still there. There was only one place left - under the dinette seats. Perhaps it was a big rattler got in somehow!!! Bravely (again) I carefully lifted the cushions off, then the seat, to be confronted with …….. The Printer! It had developed an error, thinking it had seated the ink cartridges, but it hadn’t so it was clacking away, making the printer vibrate and bang around, sounding just like an animal ferreting about under the trailer. It’s a good job I know how to capture a wild and cornered scanner and printer, otherwise we could have been terrorised.
In the middle of the night it started raining and did not stop for most of Friday, so this seemed like a good day to visit the local IHOP for a pancake breakfast. It was a good idea, but the food was not up to IHOP’s usual standard. Never mind, 7 hours later I still feel full. (oh, we did have to deviate this afternoon and have an excellent donut and coffee in a little café). This was followed by retail therapy in Walmart. By then, the rain was clearing, so we returned to the State park and followed the road out across the bayou (a stretch of flat land about 3 miles wide, which is regularly flooded by the Mississippi, to find the Mighty Mississippi. We parked beside it and wondered at the size of it. I wandered down to the edge, dabbled my fingers in it and collected some sand (yes Sandy for you). We looked across it, to the other bank which is in Arkansas, at which point I uttered the words which are to become burned in my brain as possibly one of my best and funniest quotes (my opinion, not necessarily reflected by others). “Hey Arkansee Arkansas!”. Which of course I had to then modify as we drove back to the campsite to “Hey, Ardunsaw Arkansas”, which, like some many brilliant and pithy quotes I have created, sounded better from a poetic standpoint but had actually lost something by the time I thought of it.

Tomorrow Graceland.

Out and About in Amish Country

On Wednesday it had stopped raining and was a beautiful morning. We decided that we would like to see some of the countryside. We drove out of the little valley we were hidden in and drove, via forest roads, for about an hour to a farmers market that we had been told about, which was in the middle of an Amish community. On the way, we passed a number of black buggy’s and horse drawn carts. We even stopped and talked to one chap on a very ancient bicycle, nothing fancy, just about the change in the weather and the steep hill he was cycling up. Eventually, we got to see Amish people working in their fields, using horse drawn ploughs. It was amazing, it was the first time we had seen okra growing. The West’s had told us quite a bit about the way that the Amish live. The farmers market had all sorts of packets of strange dried beans and leaves and fruits and stuff. It was run by a local Mennonite Church. We drove on for another hour or so and ended up at a Subway in Linden. This was obviously an important town as it really did have one stop light, right in the middle. It was very nice though, with its Art Deco store fronts and a big hotel. We stopped for groceries at a Food Giant. Found the Post Office and posted a card for Fiona (if you read this Fiona your birthday card will probably be a bit late, but it will have been posted from the hick town which is furthest away from anywhere (even the nearest Walmart is 30 miles away) else in Tennessee). We stopped in at Mousetail State Park and had a look at the might Tennessee River, which was very interesting. I also found a whole load of fungi in the woods and took some pics of them, I may post them at some time. We returned to the old homestead in time for supper – yummy home made pizza. Then we sat round and talked and sang, their voices are beautiful together.
We have had such a good time, with good people and enjoyed so many good things with the West Family. We thank them for their hospitality, love and for opening their home to us - we feel very privileged to have been able to spend this time with them. However in this life you can't just sit on a front proch forever and good things must come to an end and tomorrow we hitch up our wagon and leave this little corner of heaven in Tennessee and move on to Memphis and Graceland.

Way Out With The West's -reposted

(More pictures to follow)
Over the weekend we had seen the West Ladies a number of times, Friday night and during the day on Saturday, we seemed to get on very well. They are a family of three girls, Jasmine, CeCe and Hannah and their mother, Vicki. They sing beautiful harmony. They live within an Amish community, though they are not Amish, they describe themselves as Homesteaders. Which means that they have about 100 acres, mostly wooded, way, way, way out in the backwoods of Tennessee. They do not have electricity, they have spring water. They grow as much of their food as they can. They have a small income from selling produce, music CD’s and DVD’s of instructional homesteading. They are very lively and lovely to talk to. When we mentioned that we were about to travel down the Natchez Trace Parkway the told us that their homestead was only a few miles away and invited us to come on over. So change of plan.
On Monday morning we took another long drive along I40 and fetched up at the West’s Place before dark on the afternoon.
We managed to find a place to put the trailer on their front drive. We had a pooled supper in their cosy wooden house, we had been given two massive pork ribs by the BBQ vendor late Saturday night and they did nicely. We all went to bed early as we were all shattered and it was dark and the house batteries had run down.
Tuesday was wet
It rained all day Tuesday, so there was very little to do outside, they made breakfast of homemade bread, oatmeal cooked in butter (their own butter) and maple syrup (they make their own maple syrup from the maple trees on their land). Jasmine showed me their solar panel power supply, which was very interesting. CeCe showed me the animals as she collected eggs, but for most of the day we all holed up in the West’s Cabin and talked about how to live off the land, we swapped tips on cooking from basics (Sally have taught cooking as part of her Home Economics), and they showed us their sewing and we talked and played and sang and watched the rain and talked. We swapped family histories and some songs. Drank raspberry and mint tea and talked. Had burgers for tea, CeCe made a great Peach Cobbler from their own caned peaches and we talked. This of course was a very tiring day, so we all retired early when the batteries ran out after a good day.

Sunday at Raccoon Valley

Sunday was a low key day, we had a quiet morning, then joined Kay and George and Jim and Bobbie for lunch at a small restaurant in Clinton. We had thought it was about time we did some washing (we can last about 2 weeks), so found a launderette and spent the afternoon washing.
Sunday evening we joined George and Kay, Jim and Bobbie and went to George and Kay’s church, the same one we had been to three weeks before when we first arrived back at Raccoon Valley. It was a very nice meeting. George felt moved to preach on Peter walking, not walking, walking on the water. We had a very good time there. Afterwards we went to Shoney’s for a supper.

Raccoon Valley Festival

Miraculously, today started with clear skies! The sun shone all day, though a cooling breeze kept it to about 70 degrees - just about perfect weather for the day.
By 10.00 the place was bustling - vendors had their food stalls going, craft stalls were set out and under way, the sound man, John, was making good noises from the P.A. All around the site the Patt Family had set out old farm implements, trucks, tractors, and homesteading equipment. It was a great day. The bands started at 11.00 and played continuously through the day. There were tractor rides and a band competition (Pickin’ In The Pines), Molasses making, the saw mill operating and a blacksmith. Down in the little valley they had a Lawn Tractor Pull. Lots of people came and all had a great day. Sally and I wandered around having a great time, spent a lot of time listening to the bands. The most famous of which were Paul Williams and the Victory Trio and Shadow Ridge, though I thought that Blue Moon Rising were a great band. The West Ladies also did two spots and brought the house down. A great day put on by the Patt family and we felt pleased that we had been a part of it, though very small.
Lawn Tractor Pull. This is a great event. You bring your lawn tractor (mower) and see if you can pull a sled along a track, fastest tractor wins. The sled has two wheels at the back, with ski type things at the front. There is a big weight that starts over the back wheels and is slowly pulled forward over the skis as it moves forward, this makes it progressively more difficult to move the tractor, so it is easy to start, but difficult to finish. Of course some people modify their tractors, so they are often very noisy and powerful. It is a great spectacle.

Raccoon Valley Arrival and Pre-Festival

!!!Note for readers!!! Please do not be concerned if you cannot follow all the names mentioned below as they are all either part of the Patt Family, or friends and we have only learned them as we have met them. Just take it from me that they are all wonderful.
On Thursday we arrived at Raccoon Valley and were immediately welcomed by Lisa and Winfred, whom we had not seen since Palatka,FL in February. They originally invited us to leave our trailer at Racoon Valley. We then set up our trailer. This was to be our first real experience of Dry Camping (We had stayed at Connie’s without hookup), so we filled the water tank (We have a 28 gallon onboard tank) and set up on the hill top above the festival ground. We had made sure the propane tanks were full and also set up our little 2kW Honda generator. This was to enable us to top up the battery, heat water and run the computer, though we only need to run it about an hour a day.
I then went and found George and Kay, who had been so wonderful to us when we parked up the trailer in the summer and then again in September when we returned. I then helped George and Marvin (of June and Marvin, from Cincinnati, Ohio) to make ready for the festival. We had a great time putting up tents, setting out tables and marking out the parking field. We had been invited to eat with the family as it was Janice’s birthday and they were having a bit of a party in Kertinka’s barn. This was a great time. We had to eat ham and chicken and birthday cake (not at the same time).
Friday dawned and we could hear rain on the roof. Never mind, the work had to be finished for Saturday, so when the rain eased off we finished marking out the parking field, having to stop for the lunch that Kertrinka had made – leftovers, plus hamburgers, chicken and dumplings that June (of June and Marvin) had made, ham and beans, as well as some really good peanut butter fudge.
We worked on in the afternoon and thankfully the rain stopped.
Everything seemed to be falling into place, the sound man had arrived and was setting up. During the day many of the concession stands arrived and set up. The Cotton candy, candied apples, Smokey Joes, BBQ, Coffee, Funnel Cake, Kettle corn, Fresh squeezed lemonade. A couple of church kitchens.
When the car park was finished, I got to clean out the blacksmith shop - an open fronted building with loads of old smithying tools. Best part was I got to use a leaf blower to blow a whole year’s worth of leaves out of the shop and down the hill –great fun.
Sally and I made up some tractor shaped windmills for Lisa. We had borrowed a golf cart and went round the site putting out these attractive little windmills beside the real vintage tractors that were on display.
We passed the sorghum mill being set up. The man was getting some juice from the cane (similar to sugar cane) by squeezing it between two large rollers, like a vertical mangle. These were turned by a horse plodding round. (We saw this at Cherokee State park on Sept19th while we stayed with Jay and Christie. There are some photo’s on another blog). We had a look at the rateher impressive Saw Mill that Tim had organised and they were testing out. The saw is about 4ft in diameter, with 48 teeth, run by the drive from a large diesel motor. There is a rack for the tree truck which is mounted on rails, powered by a belt take off from the diesel engine, so that the trunk is moved up and down past the blade. Very impressive to see in operation in the field (or rather forest), cutting up oak trees with a 18inch diameter.
In the evening, we all went out to Ann’s Kitchen for a meal and also to see Tim’s band ‘White Water’ playing. As well as his band, one of the groups who were performing at the festival turned up and sung a bit. We were introduced to them, The West Family from West Tennessee,who are a lovely family. It was a great evening, good music, good food and most of all good people to be with. We really enjoyed the evening.

About Pilot's and Checking Our Weight

The day shone clear as we drove across the Cumberland Plateau, an ancient upland eroded and divided by many streams, covered in forest, which is now starting to show the first signs of autumn (Fall) colours. The drive into Tennessee is not a long one, however we stopped at a Pilot Truck Stop. In the USA there are several large, competing Truck Stop names, such as Pilot and Flying J. They cater for everything a trucker may need. Overnight stops, showers, food, truck wash and scales (weigh station).
We have never weighed our vehicle, but following our overheating in West Virginia it was on my mind that we should check if there was a problem.
We organised with the attendant and set the truck and trailer onto the scales, there were four ‘pads’ to set the wheels onto. I put the whole of the truck on to one pad and the twin axles of the trailer on to another. We paid our $9.00 and got the results. The truck empty is 6550lbs, it now weighs 8800lbs, that included the tongue (nose) weight of the trailer, which is in the region of 1000 – 1200lbs. The trailer axles came in at 6500lbs, which plus the nose weight would be about 7500- 8000lbs. Total weight is 15300lbs. The truck load and the trailer load are both beneath their maximum, though the combined weight is 1400lbs above that recommended by Chevy. However the Chevy dealer was happy that the truck was able to pull up to 10000lbs happily when they fitted the tow hitch. So it seems OK to me. I am also happy that the bigger weight is in the truck, rather than the trailer as that should keep it more stable in towing (and it is very stable).

Cumberland (You can miss this - it is just info)

Cumberland is a name which crops up a lot in this part of the world.
The Cumberland River, starts and runs along the north and west side of the Cumberland Plateau.
The Cumberland Plateau is an area of uplands about 2000 square miles in central Tennessee and southern Kentucky. Though lower than the Appalachians it is between 1200 and 1500 feet high, deeply cut by many rivers, mostly feeding via tributaries like the Duck River, North or West into the central section of the Cumberland River.
The Cumberland Falls is a waterfall on the river, in central southern KY.
Cumberland Lake is a large reservoir to the west of London in KY.
Cumberland Gap. The Cumberland River actually rises at Cumberland Gap, about 30 miles East of the Falls,
Cumberland Gap is on the border between KY and TN and is on the watershed between the Norris River, which runs into the Clinch River, which joins the TN River south West of Knoxville. It is famous because it was one of the best places to cross over from the East to the West.
The biggest town in the Cumberland Gap area is a town called Middlesboro, which is famous for having been built in an old meteor crater, though I am afraid that we did not have time to visit it.
However the Cumberland River winds north and west, then south for about a hundred miles or so, before turning north again as it passes over the Cumberland Falls.
There are many towns called Cumberland in the USA, though there is not one in TN surprisingly
Cumberland County is a county a little to the west of Knoxville, which has Crossville as its regional centre.

The Tennessee River marks the eastern edge of the Cumberland Plateau, but takes very little water from it. The Tennessee River takes most of the water from the Southern Appalachians, (including the Cullasaja River we had watched flooding a week ago), its watershed stretches into Virginia to the North, just about gets into Georgia, via the Little Tennessee River and almost to Bowing Rock and past Ashville to the East. However, at the Cumberland Falls the Cumberland River flows north, then swings west down to Nashville, where it continues west to meet the Tennessee River as one side of the Land Between the Lakes. The other side is the Tennessee River, which then very quickly runs into the Ohio River.

Visiting London - Tuesday

Leaving Shelbyville we struck back towards our friends in Raccoon Valley, near Heiskell, near Powell, near Knoxville, TN.
En route we wanted to visit the Cumberland Falls, so planned to stop at Levi Jackson State Park, disappointingly, since it is such a good dance, Levi Jackson was only a State Governor, though there may be more to find out. The weather was cloudy and not very warm. The park is quite close to the Cumberland Falls and just outside the town of London! We found out that London was famous for its Chicken Festival and we had only missed it by a couple of days. Well we are learning that you can’t do everything.
We also found out that the reason it has the Chicken Festival is that London is right near Corbin, which is where Mr and Mrs Harland Sanders lived and worked. They owned the local gas station, which like a lot of gas stations, wanted to offer truck drivers more, so they would buy gas from them. He and his wife started to make snacks to sell, and then opened a café. Their most popular item was their southern fried chicken, for which people came from miles around to eat. His success was based on a hardworking business ethic which relied on the concept that if you were the best you would succeed. The success of the café enabled him to build a motel. He also developed the food side of the business and because he used advanced industrialised methods was able to transfer his quality items to other café’s. After returning from the second world war, where he was in charge of eight restaurants somewhere in Washington State, he sold his little empire and moved to Louisville and started his chain of restaurants which became Kentucky Fried Chicken.
We visited The Cumberland Falls, which are indeed a wonderful sight. They are called the Niagara falls Of The South. They drop 57 feet and are 125 feet across. We had a lovely time just looking at the falls in the lovely countryside.
We finished the day by stopping at The Sanders Café in Corbin to have a KFC meal in the place they were invented.

Shelbybville Ky (where?)

Had a dress down Monday, relaxed, read, played. Then mossy'd (?) on down to the town of Shelbyville, which is just near our campground. It is quite small, but has a nice historic district with a small museum (which being Monday was closed). Main Street is full of Victorian to Art deco shop fronts.
We stopped in at Mckinley's for lunch and were introduced to 'Hot Browns'. Fortunately this was toast, turkey, tomato, cheese sauce and bacon on the top. It was very tasty, with a cup of 'Unstuffed Green Pepper Soup'. Unstuffed, because the stuffing (ground beef, tomato etc) has been taken out and put in the soup, 'unstuffed' as opposed to 'not stuffed' at all, because that would have been called 'Not Stuffed Green Pepper Soup', or even, I suppose 'Just Green Pepper Soup', obvious, eh?
We then had a further stroll up the sleepy Main Street, found out that it was a really important town, because it was while he was staying here that Lewis found out that Clark had committed suicide (or was it Clark found out that Lewis had committed suicide) in Tennessee.
It is also probably the only community in this part of KY that does not have some link with Lincoln, his father, mother, wife or friends.