First stop on the Natchez Trace at Chickasaw Village site.
Indians built the frame of their winter house of logs covered with oak or
hickory splints, 6 inches of clay and a thick thatch of long grass.
We visited graves of 13 unknown Confederate soldiers.
Stopped at Dogwood Valley, some trees thought to be 100 years old.
A natural cave probably used by the Indians.
So many beautiful redbud trees blooming along the roadway. The picture doesn't do it justice.
Nature is amazing, how this branch grew in a curve!
Hiking down the path to a clear clear creek.
It looks like a crust on top of this slight hill, but is the top soil with grass and a few trees growing on it. Top soil is loess, clay looking but very fine, doesn't hold together. A lot of erosion in this area.
We stopped at Napier Mine where they mined iron in the 1800's.
The grave of Meriwether Lewis. A broken column to signify that his life ended too early...age of 35.
100 others are buried there. One family is the Tait family. Our son-in-law's first name is Tait, so found this interesting.
Farmers in this area grew tobacco. It took them 250 hours of labor per acre to bring tobacco from seed to harvest. An acre of wheat 3 hours of work. Tobacco is very labor-intensive.
Gordon House built in 1818, one of the first brick homes in the area. The family ran a ferry across Duck River.
We are traveling through more hill country. Also trees are not as leafed out as when we started the Trace.
The Birdsong Hollow double arched bridge near Nashville, the end of our travels on the Natchez Trace Parkway. Imagine the Indians first traveling up and down these hills, through the woods, crossing rivers, lakes and streams. Then the French and Spanish venturing into a new world. Then the farmers wanting to get the best price for their crops, taking them hundreds of miles down the rivers. So many traveled through this area before it was a smoothly paved road. How very remarkable and ambitious our forefathers were.
On the Road Again Saturday March 26 from Paducah, KY. This is where we spent our first night on this trip and our last night. We are on the homeward stretch.
What an incredible 60 day journey of 6684 miles it has been. We try to think of a highlight and we can not name just one. Each day, each stop, all the people we met along the way, all the new things we learned about our country, indescribable, but we did try it through this blog. Something not mentioned earlier it's amazing to see how flat the land is in FL. AL. MS. and LA.
We were blessed with good travel conditions and so many, many days of sunshine, only one day of heavy rain. We now return to winter. We kept thinking it was spring and then summer as we experienced temperatures up to 85 degrees. Soon we'll be planning our next trip to investigate our great country. Hope you enjoyed our stories and pictures.
- using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment