Mississippi

As we left Alabama the rain started to fall. About 50 miles down the road it was getting quite heavy so we decided to call it quits for the day and pulled into a State Park. It was full - Grey Power RV’ers waiting for Halloween – or maybe they were Halloween, I’m not too sure. The decorations they had out around their RV’s and the camp was quite amazing. No spaces available so we carried on our merry way; the rain did ease but didn’t stop. We ended up just inside Mississippi at Clarkeco State park. We saw that we were close to Clarkdale, a very important Blues town, so we thought we’d book in for a couple of days and take a ride into town and check it out. It was just as well we talked to the ranger when we checked in the next morning as we were about 200 miles and an ‘s ’ out. The town we wanted was ClarkSdale and that was 200 miles to the nth east. We were actually only 50 miles away from it when we were in Memphis but didn’t realize it. Hadn’t done our homework!!
Even though it was in the totally opposite direction that we were planning to go I managed to get Marty to turn around and off we went. I only missed one turn adding 20 miles to the trip which wasn’t too bad considering the weather was so terrible. We had to hunt out our sweatshirts and jeans. Couldn’t find a camp when we arrived in so we parked up at the visitor information Clarksdale centre for the night. The next morning we went in to find out where all the sights were we wanted to see. The lady was so helpful and so friendly that we headed off with high hopes and much enthusiasm. It was soon deflated. Downtown Clarksdale has died. Most of the buildings are empty and/or in disrepair. Businesses have moved up to the main road where a whole new world of shopping exists. Malls and Wal – Mart. It was very sad to see. We went to the Delta Blues Museum which celebrated the lives of local blues musicians like Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Howlin’Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Son House, and many more that we hadn’t heard off. It even had the log cabin that Muddy Waters lived in on Stovall plantation. We had lunch at the Ground Zero Blues Club. This is co owned by actor Morgan Freeman (a local boy). This building looks very derelict from the outside and pretty basic inside but that doesn’t stop the numerous local and international blues musicians from playing there. Unfortunately none were playing when we went. We decided not to hang around even though there was to be a Blues Festival on at the weekend. There was nothing else we wanted to see and we found it quite depressing. We stopped at “The Crossroads” (Highways 61 and 49) where Robert Johnson apparently sold his soul to the devil but that is now a busy intersection with traffic lights at not at all like the empty dusty road we’d seen on movies and in books. But I guess thing change in 80 years. We continued south stopping at the Hopson plantation on the way. This was one of the first plantations to use mechanised cotton picking methods, but like Clarksdale it was desolate. Even though it was advertised as a museum we didn’t know if it was or if it was a private residence so we continued on our way, thinking we had driven 200 miles for nothing. But there is always a silver lining and we found it in Leland. This is another small town with Blues history. We stopped in at the Highway 61 Blues Museum and the first poster I saw on the wall was one advertising an event featuring Midge Marsden (a Kiwi blues muso) and Willie Foster. An elderly lady was manning the museum (76) and she was really nice. She told me that her husband (83) had prematurely aged her because all he wanted to do now was watch ball games on TV, eat and sleep. I had to hide my smile. She tried to get the local blues historian to come down and talk to us but he was busy with his brothers wedding but she did manage to get a local blues singer, Pat Thomas to come in and play us a few songs. His father was a famous blues player, Son Thomas, and he was the spitting image of him. Pat is a bit of an artist and he drew us two of his famous cat drawings and signed them so maybe one day we will have some truly valuable pieces of art. We had a great few hours in there.
Another thing that Leland is almost famous for is being the birth place of Kermit the Frog so we hopped off to the Frog Museum. I had my photo taken with Kermit but Marty was too shy.

We traveled on down to Jackson, the scenery changing from cotton and soya fields to swamps, catfish ponds, and woods and back to cotton fields. We passed through some very poor southern towns that looked just like we’d imagined but despite the poverty they felt very much alive.

We managed to get the last site at the St Park in Jackson which was also very central to the things we wanted to see and do. The weather was still cool but the rain had stopped. My sleeping bag objected to being used and showed its displeasure by splitting a seam and expelling half of its feathers. I have been forced to do housework every day in an attempt to rid ourselves of feathers.

We had been told that we ought to visit Natchez, a city about 100 miles Sth west of Jackson so we hoped on the bike and rode down via the Natchez Trace Parkway. This follows the old trail that took, firstly Indians and eventually settlers from Mississippi over the low hills to Tennessee. Along the way there are numerous markers pointing out historical sights so we stopped off at a few of these along the way. The highlight of the ride, although very brief was the spotting of 3 bobcats on the side of the road. They didn’t hang around for the photo shoot worse luck.

We made a detour and went to look at the Windsor ruins. These are impressive. They are all that remain of a 32 room mansion built by a seriously rich cotton plantation owner who died 2 weeks after its completion. His wife and family lived in it until it was destroyed by an accidental fire in the late 1800’s.

We didn’t arrive in Natchez until 2.30pm which seriously cut into my time to look at the antebellum homes so I was forced to pick just one to look through. I decided on Longwood as I thought that would be of more interest to Marty (I was redeeming a brownie point here). Longwood is amazing. It is the largest octagonal house in America and was built, surprise, surprise, by a wealthy cotton plantation owner named Haller Nutt. Building on the 6 storey mansion started in 1860. The outside was completed and then the Civil War began and as the builders came from the north they downed tools and fled back home. Haller completed the basement and he and his family lived there during the war. Don’t feel sorry for them. It was over 3000 sq foot and exquisitely furnished. Haller lost his fortune in the war and died in 1864. The house was never finished and the upper stories remain as they did the day the builders left.
His wife lived on in the basement until her death some 33 years later. It was amazing and one can only imagine how opulent it would have been had it been completed.

We had a good ride back. I spotted 12 deer and 3 wild turkeys. One deer and two turkeys decided to test the efficiency of our brakes and thankfully for all concerned they work pretty damn good.

I cashed in another of my brownie points by dragging Marty along to the science museum in Jackson, but as he enjoyed it as much as I did I am thinking that it didn’t count so I have put that one back in the Brownie Bank. They had an awesome display of Birds of Prey. One section had the birds each with a plate of food at their feet showing the diet of that particular bird. All the insects, rodents etc were real. Stuffed- but real. They also have a Californian Condor on display. This bird had been hand reared and released back into the wild. For 9 mths they tracked it and then one day it stopped moving. They found it dead. Killed by drinking anti freeze that someone had discarded on the road. I can only imagine how devastated those people would have felt. Other birds released have been luckier and still survive but it is obviously going to be a struggle to get the population of these great birds back up to a point where they are no longer considered endangered. It was very interesting to read about the number of animals in Mississippi alone that are on the verge of extinction due mainly to man encroaching too far into their habitat. There are at least 66 birds/animals in this category now.

Once out of that section we went to the aquatic section and here we saw some really weird looking fish, and some extremely large fish. Marty spotted a two headed mud snake and of course we saw some alligators. There was an outside walk which we did part of but the swamp was dry and there were kids running around so there was no hope of spotting anything so decided it was time to leave. Ranger Bob at the camp told us that most people spent an hour there and were done. We had taken 4.

We ended the day in McComb a few miles north of the Louisiana border and 130 odd miles from our next destination.
New Orleans.