Natchez, here we come!

Sorry for no post yesterday---I was having computer issues. Hopefully, they have passed. We got a really late start Wednesday--like 2 pm! What were we thinking?!? When we got up, it was rainy and dreary so we decided we would wait a while and see if it would clear up. When check out time was upon us, we decided it was time to EAT!! We thought about going back to Loveless but Laura had told us about another place, Barbara's Home Cooking, so we decided to check it out. It rained all the way there and the whole time we were eating. We had a great experience there--- great service and great food (and they think we are travel writers!) My friend, Debbie, called while we were there to see if we were still in the area. Since we were, she came and joined us for lunch and bought ours. Many thanks, Debbie!!! Great to see you, too!!! After lunch, we hit the Trace, Natchez Trace that is. It's a beautiful road---much better than I expected and the speed limit is 50 mph. (I thought it would be slower) and there is very little traffic so you can really take in the scenery. We didn't stop at every place we could have but we did stop a lot. We saw lots of turkeys, the Gordon House, the Duck River, tobacco and tobacco barn (we had seen our fill of those in KY), a waterfall (sort of) and lots of trees! We took a couple of short hikes and we were fortunate that we didn't get much rain. When we first started out, it took us about 3 hours to go 40 or 50 miles. At that rate, we were not going to make it to NOLA by Friday so we stepped it up a bit and made it to Tupelo before calling it a night. We checked in our hotel and found a nice local restaurant, Harvey's. Service once again, was stellar and food was good, including that piece of coconut chess pie!

Today, Thursday, we set out a bit earlier. We found a questionable looking place for breakfast but it was fine and the food was actually really good. Then we went to Elvis' boyhood home. There were 2 tour buses there so we did not do the tour (2 rooms should not take that long!) but we walked around the grounds and went in the chapel. We found our way back to the Natchez Trace and continued on our way. We pulled off a couple of places and then we came to French Camp. Very interesting. The Drane House was there as well as French Camp Academy. Jaunita, the volunteer de jour, was there and was a wealth of information. She had been in the Class of 47 (she showed us her graduation picture). The school has been in existence forever (I can't remember all the details and am too lazy to look them up). There were several original buildings on the property and 2 museums. We took it all in, then headed on to the welcome center in Kosciusko (birthplace of Oprah) to have our picnic lunch. We ate our $2 pimiento cheese, our KY tomatoes, almonds and our Hampton chocolate chip cookies. Yum. Back on the road, we kept running in and out of rain. The strange thing was, it was sunny most of the day--even when raining. We took a trail that there were supposed to be beavers on but we didn't see any. We also walked through a cypress swamp and saw the Pearl River then took a short hike to a waterfall. Even less of a waterfall than the one yesterday! By this time, dusk and fog were settling in so we came on into Natchez playing dodge 'em deer. We only saw 2 deer in the daylight and about 20 at dusk/dark. We pulled into Natchez around 8 after completing the entire Natchez Trace. We found food (and drink), did the laundry and caught up on the blog. What more could you ask for?