Pat and Gary on the Mississippi

 

Our journey began on May 2 with a trip to Florence KY to check out TJ's new digs at the apartment complex she manages there. As we were having dinner Kenton showed up and Pat presented him with the quilt she had been working on for the past year. When he left, Ezra arrived and told us about his new job at the credit union. 

After breakfast we headed for Nashville, about a three hour drive. We took our golf clubs along with us to pass the time during the wait between stages of our trip and searched for courses as we drove. Our first find was a course in Hendersonville TN called Country Hills, not very expensive and far from the big cities. Since the weather had been rainy the past few days, it was cart path only, and it started to rain as we began play. We trudged on, the rain eventually stopped, but the course was quite wet and tough to walk. Nine holes later we were happy to stop.

 Finally we reached our motel room (Red Roof Plus) near the Nashville airport. We asked the attendant for a recommendation for dinner, and she said to try Broadway...SURE. Broadway was 6 lanes of bumper to bumper. We moved two blocks in a half hour. It reminded me of trying to drive through Time Square. Come to find out there was a hockey play-off game down town, a big concert, a baseball game, and who knows what else. There was not a hotel room available within 10 miles. 

If you haven't been to Nashville in a while, you might be surprised at how it has grown. There are plenty of new glass covered tall buildings, lots of modern shopping centers, and plenty of entertainment.

You can find a bar, or you can get on a portable bar pulled by horses or tractors, or propelled by pedal power. 

Broadway is the place where the big country stars from the past have their restaurants, museums, honky-tonks, etc. Once we moved off of Broadway, traffic was much better and we found a nice Italian restaurant with a one hour wait list.

The next day we tried playing golf again at a course called Oak Hills near Nashville.  Again it was cart path only.  Again it was very wet.  It was probably converted pasture land.  The rough was mostly very heavy clover...could not find your ball...another frustrating round.

Finally on Saturday we got to go to the Grand Ole Opry!  It was very entertaining, watching them do a live radio and tv show with several singers that we didn't actually recognize.  But the thrill of the evening was a 20 minute set done by Vince Gill.  What a pure voice (even at his age)...didn't have or need back-up singers.  He did most of his numbers with just one other guitarist.

OK, one more try at golf on Sunday at a course called Fox Meadows near Memphis.  The course was very flat but also very wet.  We are both fed up with cart path only and Bermuda grass!

We arrived at the Guest House for Graceland where all the American Cruise Lines guests were housed to await shuttle to the boat.  The next day we were treated to a bus tour of Memphis before boarding.  Memphis is an old city with many buildings dating to the 1800's and in various states of  repair.  The city is working hard to restore much of the architectural masterpieces from the past.  There are many signs of the musical history (including lots of references to Elvis and to the Blues origins). Beale Street is one of those places with lots of restaurants and bars featuring music from the past and present.

One of the highlights of the tour was a stop at the legendary Peabody Hotel where we watched the march of the ducks.  Yes ducks!  The Peabody has a tradition of having a small group of trained ducks riding the elevator from the roof, where the ducks spend the night in the "duck palace", to the main floor, where they march from the elevator to the fountain in the center of the lobby.  They march in at 11:00 sharp and then back to the roof at 5:00 every day.  You can watch the ducks march in here.

 

Our first stop after leaving Memphis was Vicksburg MS where we stayed overnight.  On the first day we took the loop tour of the city of 20,000 people that allowed us to get off the bus as we pleased and catch it later at any of the bus stops.  We got off at one of the first stops and strolled the shopping district for about a mile taking in the many shops along the way.  The brick streets were well maintained and many of the very old buildings had been restored...very pleasant.

The civil war museum near the end of our walk was a sobering experience as we moved through the aisles of displays of weapons, munitions, pictures, paintings, uniforms, and memorability.  Amputation kits and cannon balls evoked  strong feelings as we imagined the stories of the brave men who lost their limbs and lives fighting against their own countrymen.  

One of the bragging points for the region is the fact that Vicksburg was the home of the first Coca Cola bottling plants.  Another nice little museum in town displays equipment used in the early days as well as plenty of memorabilia of the industry,

A huge source of pride for the community is a set of about 20 murals that are about 20 feet high that are painted along the flood wall.  Walking past these works of art we could imagine the great effort made to capture the history of the region.

On the second day in Vicksburg we simply rested on the boat.  The long hike the day before in 96 degree heat got Gary all tuckered out, so we spent the day wrestling with the computer to get our pictures into the right files so that they could be used in this blog.  We are sure a 12-year-old could have performed this task much more easily, but we had no 12-year-olds on board.  In fact out of the 180 passengers there must have been only about a dozen under the age of 65.  It was kind of a preview of what it must be like in an old folks home.

We arrived in Natchez MS during the early morning and headed out for our excursion after a quick breakfast at about 8:30 AM.  The bus drove for about 45 minutes to a modern cotton plantation owned by a couple who maintained a museum that displayed the history of the cotton industry of the region.  We started our tour in an old building that housed the original steam powered cotton gin. 

 

The tour was guided by a delightful former teacher and actress, dressed in appropriate garments, who explained the history of the process of separating the seeds from the lint in the cotton bolls.

In the earliest days of the plantations slaves would manually pick the seeds out, averaging just a small box of seedless cotton per day.  The hand cranked cotton gin, invented by Eli Whitney, proved to be much more efficient,  allowing about 50 times more cotton to be processed per day.  Then Whitney up scaled his invention to a gin that takes up the space of a barn and powered by a steam engine.  This improved production by a thousand fold and really made the cotton business a major industry.

We then toured the modern facility where they process 3000 acres of their own cotton and cotton from all the plantations in the area.

In the afternoon we took our tour bus into the city proper to look around and do some shopping.  We ended up walking several miles, but didn't find the items we were looking for.

The city was extremely clean and tidy, with wide sidewalks and brick paved streets.  Although a good portion of the stores were empty, the downtown area seemed to be busy.

On Sunday we arrived at St. Francisville LA, a small town with not much going on.  The American Cruise Lines treated us to a pig roast for lunch at a small restaurant called the Oyster Bar.  The food was excellent and the atmosphere was lively.  A couple of the locals were playing guitars and singing to provide nice entertainment.

The guest of honor.

 

In honor of Mother's day dinner was a big buffet.  A few of the men dressed up in sports coats for the occasion and the women wore dresses.  We wore shorts, of course, because we didn't bring any dressy clothes as did most of the rest.  The food was excellent, as usual, and we ate too much, as usual.  The entertainment that night was a couple who played a variety of instruments, mostly banjo, and sang a variety of songs that most of us recognized...a fun night.