We spent 2 nights at the Bar-J Ranch in El Dorado, Arkansas
We were up early for feeding the horses and letting out the cows to pasture
A family of playful border collies had the run of the place
as did the ranch's Shetland pony, Buddy
We took a trail ride and I rode one of those 2 Tennessee walking horses, which true to its name was a smooth strider
Tessie's horse Jada
The girls' highlight was free time in the riding ring
From El Dorado we drove south into Louisiana
where it didn't take long to encounter a giant petrochemical plant
Poverty Point is a World Heritage Site with earthen mound remains dating from 1700 to 1100 BC
Human activity around Poverty Point goes all the way back to the Paleoindians who first crossed the Bering Land Bridge about 10,000 years ago.
Nobody knows what these Poverty Point Objects (PPOs) were used for. An early form of D&D?
Mound A is 70 feet tall, the biggest mound on the site and 2nd largest in North America after Cahokia in Illinois. Nevertheless, to my modern eyes it was a bit underwhelming especially considering there is a swale immediately adjacent where they took the dirt from.
Um, I think I'll pass on these gas station delicacies
I was excited for Vicksburg because it was a brilliant campaign by General Grant to retake control of the Mississippi River and cut off Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri from the rest of the Confederacy. Learning of the Union victory, Lincoln wrote that "the Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea." However it is difficult to appreciate the site of the siege today with all the trees obscuring the city overlooks. Caroline got in some more driving and managed not to hit any stone memorials.
In 2017 in Jackson the the Two Mississippi Museums opened. On one side is the Museum of Mississippi History and on the other side is the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.
The Civil Rights Museum was unsparing in its description of the history of slavery and the atrocities committed by Mississippians
Actually the ratification vote passed in 1995, only 130 years late, but it wasn't sent to the national archivist to become official until 2013.
We had a delicious dinner in Jackson at Saltine Restaurant, where the happy hour included $4 chicken and biscuits. Upon seeing the bottle of Louisiana brand hot sauce it dawned on me that Tabasco is not a type of hot pepper sauce but actually the brand name, like Kleenex for facial tissues and Band-aids for bandages. I tasted the 2 and The Original Louisiana Brand Hot Sauce was much hotter than McIlhenny Co's Tabasco Brand Pepper Sauce.
The Natchez Trace Parkway runs from Natchez MS in the south all the way north to Nashville. It follows a native people's footpath and until the age of steamships, boatmen from the North known as Kaintucks would float their goods south on the Mississippi River and walk back home on the Trace.
Natchez NHP is a collection of antebellum sites including a cotton plantation
The plantation site felt straight out of a Nancy Drew game
From Natchez we drove southeast to the gulf coast to Gulf Islands National Seashore, which encompasses barrier islands east of Mobile Bay in Florida and to the west in Mississippi, where we were
We stayed in Gulfport, which was ground zero in 2005 for Hurricane Katrina
Like many Gulf beaches, the sand was soft, the water shallow, and waves tame
It was strange to see so much undeveloped beachfront property, but maybe on the MS Gulf Coast nature will win the never-ending battle of houses vs hurricanes
Heading home from NOLA we skipped the French Quarter but found another outpost of Cafe du Monde in the suburbs
"Yeep" was the cue word to spur the cattle out of their pen and into their pasture
Black skimmers!
The airport code for New Orleans is MSY airport, which stands for Moisant Stock Yards. On our trip into MSY fighter jets were taking off allowing Erin to experience a Top Gun moment
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