We left Nashville early monday morning, the fateful morning after burring our stomach lining and got the 64 (?) to go via Tennessee, Alabama and the drive through the centre of Mississippi to get onto the last section of the Natchez Trace. It was a really long drive, I think close to 13 hours but we managed it and Alex and his short shorts even managed to get a wolf whistle in the sticks of Alabama.
The Trace consist of a road that follows alongside an original walking track that was used by bison when they migrated north. It was then used by Native americans and finally by whiteys that used to float all their goods down the Mississippi river and then need to get home after selling it all in New Orleans. It's all in national park so a lot of it was closed due to the government shut down while we were there but it was still pretty and it was cool to see where the ground has been trampled meters down by being walked on for thousands of years.
We arrived in Natchez which is a small port town that did really well for itself when slavery was all the rage. The township is just full of stunning historical buildings. We stayed at another AirBNB place with a young family in the husband family home. It was older than NZ's been a country and had the most amazing high ceiling. Americans know how to do a high ceiling, Bruce would never have a problem over there.
Despite the pretty homes it is easy to see that the town has a lot of upper class and poor people with nothing in between. The shops are all closing down it really relies on the tourism. We took a plantation house tour the next day and ate us some good ol'fashioned fried chicken before heading out to a burned down plantation in the middle of nowhere. One thing I really noticed here with all the big estates was that all the owners die months after the completion... building a house must have pretty stressful back then.
We then got adventurous and prepared for our night in the forest. This involved driving past stores that sold ammo, fried chicken and fireworks and all signage was clearly written by someone who has only recently overcome illiteracy. Then you drive for another hour being tailgated by pickups that all have gun racks on dirt roads until you find a road side ammo store (which you use the windscreen wipers to indicate you're turning into) where you're meant to call the person who manages the cottage. We had no cell phone reception so had to use the store phone to get directions to this ladies house, the store owner was super lovely but we did worry he would mention our city folk status to some locals who would then make us squeal like pigs... once we found the managers home she then led us into the forest and we followed the dirt track for another 30 mins, the last place we saw on the way into the forest was kind enough to inform us "If i cAtch yo ASS yo ASS iS DeaD". Once we arrived the lady got out, came up to the window and told us she was a serial killer... que nervous laughter.
It was a cute cottage and even had a ladder you had to climb to get into bed, along with an outdoor bathtub that pretty much everyone in the guest book had had sex in... we only stayed the one night but it was nice and we survived without hearing the war cry of the banjo.
After getting dive bombed by wasps the size of golfballs (which included me jumping out of the car without putting the hand break on) we were on our way to Louisiana.
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