Going through Mississippi on a Buffalo Trail

Off in clear skies leaving the blooming azaleas behind. We were into Mississippi by 9:40 and stopped at the info center. We are in flat land, with many Ponderosa Pine trees. It looks like we could be anywhere. Arizona is red bluffs and rock, Texas is flat and scrub brush as far as the eye can see, Louisiana is water, swamp and elevated roads. I felt like Louisiana was only 3 feet deep, because when you looked over the water area, only 1 1/2 feet were above the water and probable the same below. It was a funny feeling. Now this looks like B.C., Wash, or Ore.

We stopped at the Welcome Center. It was just charming; the building is built like a brick southern mansion with white columns on the porch and 2 rocking chairs in front of the fireplace inside. This state is a combination of grand antebellum mansions, delta blues, civil wars battlefields and monuments, and the beaches down south on the Gulf of Mexico. We turned onto the Natchez Trace for 160 miles. About 8000 years ago, this was a game trail, traced by buffalo and early natives. It starts in Natchez and is a 444 mile northeast diagonal to the Mississippi-Alabama state line and on to Nashville in Tennessee. It is the story of people on the move. By 1733, the French mapped the trail and by 1785, Ohio River Valley framers would float their crops down the rivers to Natchez or New Orleans. They sold their flatboats for lumber and returned home by foot or riding. By1820, 20 local inns called 'stands' provided food and shelter. It makes me think of the 'mile' towns in B.C. on the Cariboo Trail. There are mileposts telling the history. One told of the Elizabeth Female Academy, 1818, the first school for women, in Miss. A site shows where the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes defined their hunting grounds. There is a spot on the old trace with the graves of 13 unknown Confederate Soldiers. You can hike the old trace in many spots or have a picnic. It looks just like a path through the woods. You follow the Rose Barnett Reservoir for 25 mikes, looks like a lake with low hills on the opposite shore, miles away. We stopped at a campsite outside Tupelo, Elvis' birthplace. It's down to 40 at night and you need the heat. There's a stocked pond with a little log cabin and we sat in the sun at the end of the day.