(Continued from here.)
Day 7:
Let’s all get drunk and go to Cher’s house! WOOOOO!
Whoa. Sorry. I don’t know where the Hell that came from. Let’s get on with the trip report, shall we?
I spent the last few days of my Mississippi State Vacation gradually crossing from west to east across the state, and finally into Alabama to fly home to Charlotte from Birmingham’s airport. My first stop on this cross-Mississippi leg of the trip was the Big Black River Bridge. I believe I first heard of this bridge in an article in Trains magazine, which called this bridge a “must-see”. The current bridge at this site was built in 1917, though it was not the first. During the Civil War, there was a Big Black River Bridge Battle here, which was part of the larger Vicksburg campaign.
The current bridge is a 465-foot-long concrete arch bridge. Being a fan of early 20th century architecture, I have seen countless examples of concrete buildings that glistened white when they were new, but are now a dingy grey, with black water streaks abounding. Add to that a dreary, overcast sky, and I wasn’t expecting to get good pictures. I also was not expecting to find a garbage dump, but that’s what it felt like. Apparently, people have taken to dumping loads of trash along the road where it passes under the Big Black River Bridge. Then there were the three deer carcasses, in various stages of being butchered. I was glad I can’t smell, because I’m guessing the place reeked. Nevertheless, I tried to get some decent pics of the bridge, getting as little garbage as possible in the shots. Here they are:
I was just about to leave, when I heard a train horn in the distance. Now, I know nothing about the railroads in this area, and I didn’t even know if this bridge was still in use. But I decided to wait a few more minutes to hopefully find out. Eventually, I heard what sounded like a tornado approaching. Lo and/or behold, it was a Norfolk Southern freight train:
And so, I left the land of trains-n-trash and set out towards the Mississippi Petrified Forest. But first, I needed some lunch. The nearest town to the petrified forest is Flora, Mississippi. I opened my evil GPS app and asked it to show me all the restaurants in town. I’d never heard of any of them, so I chose one just based on its name: Railroad Pizza Company. I chose wisely! I went with an 8-inch “Bayou Pizza”. It had alfredo sauce, spinach, Andy’s drool sausage, shrimp, crawdad, ‘shrooms, red onions, mozarella, goat cheese, and bacon. It was super yummy, and just the right size for me. I just wish Bear could have been there to eat the crusts.
The Mississippi Petrified Forest turned out to be a pretty cool place. It begins with a self-guided tour through the petrified forest, via a trail that meanders through small but pretty hills and gullies, which also have a living forest growing on them. It was all so peaceful, and my belly so full of delicious pizza, that I laid down on a bench and took a nap. At the end of the trail, visitors are routed through the Earth Science Museum, which is small but has lots of cool fossils and mineral deposits. Here I learned that just about anything that can be transported in water can become the rock of a fossil. They had samples where the petrified wood is composed of quartz, agate, iron, even uranium! In all, I spent probably two hours (including my nap) at the Mississippi Petrified Forest, before continuing to my hotel in Canton.
Day 8:
Regular readers of this blog know all too well that I enjoy walking around downtown areas, photographing old buildings. But what I REALLY like to see is the classic town square. You know the type: a courthouse stands at the center of a city block, which is bordered by four streets; each of those streets hosts a row of businesses that all face the courthouse. Sadly, most of these places declined with the advent of the shopping mall and the so-called “big box stores” (not to mention the slow death of small towns in general). Happily, many of them have enjoyed a rebirth in recent years, as many people opt to support local businesses and business districts. At some point in the past, I read somewhere that Canton, Mississippi was an excellent example of such a place. This is why I stopped for the night at Canton. The plan for Day 8 was to spend an hour or so roaming and photographing downtown Canton, then explore the Natchez Trace Parkway on the way to my next overnight stop at Fulton, Mississippi.
Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate. It was pouring rain when I checked out of my Canton hotel, and the forecast was predicting the rain would last all day. I went ahead and visited downtown Canton anyway despite the weather. I parked on the street, right on the square. Looking around, I confirmed that most of the storefronts appeared to be occupied, and most had awnings covering at least a narrow strip of the sidewalk. Since I was wearing a hooded winter coat, I decided to walk the full square, dashing from one awning to the next, but there was no way I was going to get my camera out in that mess. So, no pictures of Canton :-(
I found that two of the four sides of the square are indeed entirely occupied by a variety of shops and a couple of banks (which were located in 19-century buildings that were clearly originally built as banks), and a Subway restaurant. The other two sides, however, had a few vacancies, and quite a bit of city government office space. These offices being where they are have no doubt prevented these buildings from falling into abandonment and disrepair, but they don’t add anything to the shopping / dining experience. Overall, I’d say if you’re going to be in the Jackson area and want to do a little shopping, check out downtown Canton…but don’t go too far out of your way for it.
I spent most of the rest of the day on the Natchez Trace Parkway (NTP). The original Natchez Trace was a road from Natchez, Mississippi to Chattanooga, Tennessee. (My, what an unusual concentration of double letters!) The modern NTP loosely follows the original route. Like the Blue Ridge Parkway (BuRP) closer to home, the Natchez Trace Parkway traverses multiple states, is managed by the National Park Service, and was meant to be a leisurely driving experience with plenty of history and scenery along the way. It was still raining when I reached the NTP. I stopped and read historical markers along the way, but that was about it until I reached the turnoff for Jeff Busby Park. As luck would (and did) have it, I reached this turnoff during a reprieve from the rain, shortly before sunset. I drove to a picnic area atop Little Mountain, where I went for a short hike (no more than half a mile), and then took these fog-tacular pics:
Day 9:
The plan for Day 9 had been to drive to Tishomingo State Park and do some hiking, then leave Mississippi and drive to a hotel in Birmingham, Alabama to catch a flight home the following morning. But the rain had resumed during the night, and was forecast to continue all day. This time it wasn’t just a matter of not wanting to expose my camera to the rain. The local TV news also said there was flooding in the Tishomingo area. So, I skipped Tishomingo and headed east. My Mississippi State Vacation came to an end when I drove over the edge of Mississippi and plummeted several hundred feet into Alabama.
Whoa. Sorry. I don’t know where the Hell that came from.
Voyages with Parkinson's 