May 6, 2011. Jackson, Mississippi. The Natchez Trace.

The speed limit is 50 mph, all the way from Natchez to Nashville.   Yesterday we drove a small part of the way home to the condo.  It is a lovely quiet drive.   The road is excellent with wide swatches of grass on either side of the highway, with high trees behind the grass.  And everything was green, thanks to the rain, the abundant rain.  It was the opposite to the drive to the ranch in Texas, where all you saw was brown, due to the lack of rain.

In the olden days, the barges down the Mississippi River would unload their cargo at New Orleans.  But the barge driver was forced to walk back up north, so The Natchez Trace became the best road for returning to pick up yet another load on the next barge.  It was a dangerous walk.  Eventually it became a road,  then a National Driveway, so now it is beautifully maintained the whole way.  For long periods of time it becomes boring, but for an hour or so, it is a delight.  Once we drove from Jackson to Tupelo on The Trace, which was just a bit too far, but yesterday, at the end of our drive from Galveston it was lovely.