Yeah, I’m going to Jackson

A leisurely start and a look around our lodgings - the Linden House , an old antebellum mansion from 1785 - with a front door porch that’s supposedly the inspiration for the Tara front door in the Gone with the wind movie - don’t quite why that’s famous but hey ! The house is very stylish and we have a special breakfast beneath another shoo fly or as we discover it’s called a Punkah- as in punkahwallah!
A drive through historic Natchez and a visit to probably its most infamous site which is also very low key given it’s history ! It’s called the “Forks in the road” and it was the crossroads where all the slave trading happened! Apart from some plaques telling the story it’s just a small piece of grass!
We head east on the Natchez trace parkway. It’s an attractive quiet tree lined drive that led from the trading roots centring on Natchez from up and down Mississippi and east to Nashville.
We look at the Emerald Mound which an ancient 1300- 1600 First Nation site , covering 8 acres it’s the second largest in USA!
Continuing on we pass Loess bluff which is an ancient glacial layer of soils left after the ice age of 3-30 miles wide and the trace path cuts through it . There’s also an old house called Mount Locust dating from 1780 on the trace which served as a stopping off point for the boatmen to get home - their boats couldn’t go back up the river so they had to walk home!
Taking a slight detour off the Trace for a while we are amazed at the old multi Greek revival pillared 30 room mansion of Windsor ! It sadly burned down in the 1860s but weirdly all the stone pillars remain here in the middle of nowhere!
The day is heating up but the Mississippi petrified forest site is impressive and very well shaded!
It’s a late lunch and I am allowed / indulged to take in the last jukejoint The Blue Front Cafe on highway 49! It’s been there since 1948 and today run by a famous blues man Jimmy Duck Holmes ! It’s very quiet today and take a snack and drink and buy a CD off Jimmy !
It’s been a good day -albeit no sign of the luggage still and Leeds got relegated and sadly Leicester too and sadly not Everton!Read more