Our hotel was right across the street from the military park and so we had originally thought to walk to the park and explore. However, upon research, it appears the park is huge, the weather is hot, and we are getting short on time. So, we opted to drive. Good thing we did, because it is indeed huge, and we spent two hours in the park without finishing as it was. The park is arranged kind of like Yellowstone, with a main road that everyone drives on and occasional pull-offs for people to stop and look at monuments. It appears that each state involved in the battle has one or a couple major monuments and a number of smaller monuments to mark where their regiments were stationed at some point during the siege on Vicksburg. There are also markers for the Union and Confederate battle lines, as well as occasional interpretive signage. There was also a smartphone app with an audio tour (and lots of other material that we did not look into). Also in the park is a home that was used as Grant's headquarters, this is a house that was in the battlefield but not destroyed. There is a story that a ball was being held at this home when the Union troops were seen heading towards Vicksburg (recounted both here and at the Old Courthouse that we visited yesterday). And too, the U.S.S. Cairo, which was sunk by a Confederate mine and later recovered. It was a pretty impressive display. The Cairo was an "ironclad" which essentially means iron plates were placed along its wood frame. It was a steam powered ship and when it sank, the Union army knocked down the smoke stacks so the ship would be more difficult for the Confederates to locate and recover.
Since we had other plans for the day, we decided we would use the "back exit" from the park and head to the farm market in Vicksburg. One thing we did not realize was that this would result in us seeing more or less all of the Union monuments and none of the Confederate monuments. This was not our intent, but that is what happened.
We drove downtown to find the Farmers' Market. This turned out to be an adventure because the address given on the website was incorrect. Finding it took quite a bit of driving and walking. We finally found it located in a parking ramp downtown. That makes rain or shine a lot easier, I guess (although, seriously, I think shine is worse than rain some days down here). We bought some plums (a few to eat in the van. The kid I bought them from objected to my paying any money because of how few I took, I finally got him to take $1), some tomatoes to eat out of hand, and some blueberries.
It was pretty hot out and a significant walk to the van, and also, lunchtime. We saw a restaurant that overlooked the Mississippi and decided to stop. I had an oyster po'boy. which was fine, but the best part of the restaurant was the view of the Yazoo river (and the air conditioning). We chatted with the waitress. Everyone down here knows Minnesota is flooding so we usually talk about that for a bit and ask if they expect flooding down here. Most people don't seem terribly concerned, and neither did our waitress, she expected the water to come up but not to over-top the levee.
Our next stop was Natchez, MS. Natchez is located at the Southern end of an ancient trail called Natchez Trace. The Great River Road hit the Natchez Trace Parkway at some point and we decided to follow the parkway the rest of the way to Natchez (the whole parkway, and the original trace, run over 400 miles). Along the way, we found a place to pull off and walk on the old dirt trace. The trail was pretty deeply cut into the small hills it ran through, presumably due to erosion over its multiple-thousand year history. According to wiki, it was originally used by animals migrating between salt licks in Tennessee and grazing lands in the south and then by native Americans as long as 2000 years ago and then by European settlers (including Meriwether Lewis who apparently committed suicide on the trace??) . It is amazing that this path through the woods has lasted so long.
Our only stop in Natchez was the Longwood Mansion. Longwood is an unfinished octagonal mansion. Its construction was interrupted by the civil war (the architects and builders were from the North and split when hostilities opened, intending to return when the war was over in a couple months) and not long after that, the owner died and his wife was unable to manage the estate, they went bankrupt and the house was never finished. The family lived in the "basement" of the house (it isn't really below ground level) and the upper levels were never finished. The basement is 30,000 sqft of space and the upper 5 (five) levels would have been another 30,000 sqft for 60,000 sqft total. When reading about the site, I saw people mention how sad it was. Our tour guide also asked if we were all sad at the end of the tour. I wondered if the thing that made other people sad about this house was that it could have been a pretty amazing mansion (that no one would have gotten to see, had the estate stayed together), that the father/husband/owner died and therefore the estate fell apart, or that the construction was interrupted by the civil war. I guess everyone will have their own reason.
We departed directly from Longwood to the Old River Control Structure. There isn't a lot to see and it isn't really a tourist destination, so, no signs, etc. The Old River Control Structure was built by the Army Corps of Engineers to prevent the Mississippi from changing course, bypassing New Orleans and flowing through the Atchafalaya basin instead (changing deltas is just something the river does periodically). It had been threatening to do so in recent times after a river boat captain created a shortcut in the Mississippi that caused more of the river to flow (through some indirect means) into the Atchafalaya River. The Army Corps estimated that by 1990 the Mississippi would flow through the Atchafalaya River than through the current channel if nothing was done. So, they did something. They built a series of dams to control the flow of the Mississippi to the Atchafalaya River. They allow about 1/3 of the Mississippi's water to flow that way; more in a flood. In case of flood, they can also allow water to flow through the Morganza Floodway to the Atchafalaya River, but rarely do so. It was a cool place to see and fit well into our ongoing discovery of the river.
Not long after the Old River Control Structure, we saw our first Alligator. It was in a puddle in a soybean field. Naturally, we stopped and turned around after we passed it so we could take photos. Not that I am a master at reading reptilian emotions, but I would say he looked pensive when we returned. We stopped the van on the total lack of shoulder on the side of the road and he dove under the water. So, yeah, a little shy I guess. I would have waited longer to see if he would surface but I wasn't really comfortable with being stopped essentially in the middle of the road.
We stopped for the evening in Baton Rouge, LA.
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