November 4, 2016.  Doris is now 106 or so and still yearns for the open road.  We have become so busy with real life we have not taken the time for an extended Airstream adventure in over a year, having contented ourselves with two and three-day forays not too far from home.  Finally, Doris put her foot down and insisted on a trip of at least a week!  So Brad hopped to.

This time Brad did 100% of the planning and preparation, from choosing the route, to making improvements to the Airstream (a new USB port in the living room, a new DVD player, 6 new tires), to buying the groceries and stocking the pantry.  As we left the farm yesterday morning, Doris and I were completely in the dark about our destination, knowing only that we would be gone a week and were guaranteed DirectTV service on election night.

Four hours after leaving home, we pulled into the Mississippi Welcome Center on I-22, whence Brad emerged with a six-foot long map of the Natchez Trace Parkway, a 444-mile National Park Service scenic drive stretching from Natchez MS to Nashville TN.  Thirty minutes later, we were in the Parkway Visitor Center near Tupelo (about the midpoint) and heading for our first camp site, Trace State Park.  The Natchez Trace is similar in design and scope to the Blue Ridge Parkway (also a National Park), but without the dramatic curves and mountain vistas. The NTP, primarily flat and straight or gently curving, is remarkable for its history; an illumination of human habitation dating back at least 9000 years (think mysterious dirt mounds constructed with great effort for ceremonial purposes) and following a path first laid out by native buffalo on their way to Nashville (though they called it by another name) seeking substantial salt outcroppings, which were then all the rage. This long path meandering through swamps, flat land, rolling piedmont and Blue Ridge foothills later became the most traveled road in early America, used by “Kaintuck boatmen” to walk back home having floated their livestock, crops and manufactured goods by flatboat down the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to market in New Orleans and Natchez.  Before the advent of steam engines, it was impossible, or insanely impractical, to row back up the river to Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania.  So they walked.  On the trail laid out by buffalo thousands of years ago.  Stalked instead in those days by bandits, and plagued by mosquitoes, poison ivy and pesky reptiles.  It is much easier to traverse the Natchez Trace these days, even though the speed limit of 50 mph is strictly enforced.

So this morning we are setting out on an ambitious voyage from mile marker 260 to mile marker 320, a good day’s journey in which we will stop every furlong or so to explore the MANY sites and hikes of interest along the way.