Camping on a Lake

In LeFleur’s Bluff State Park, Jackson, Mississippi

5 nights on Mayes Lake…literally camping on the “inside curve” of the oxbow lake, and only 3 miles from downtown Jackson, Mississippi. We drove the first/southernmost 101.5 miles on the Natchez Trace Parkway to get here, and then spent our first day driving ~30 miles farther north, making several stops and doing some hiking.

Second day, we went into downtown Jackson, MS, to visit Medgar & Myrlie Evers Home NM, the Mississippi Capitol, and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. We had dinner at a restaurant recommended to us when we were in Charleston, SC…the Iron Horse Grille, which even had a Mississippi Blues Museum in it, with several wax figures, including BB King.

Third day, avoiding the traffic associated with a Marathon in Jackson (and being “only” an hour away), we took a day-trip to Vicksburg, MS (previously visited in the fall of 2013). We visited 2 new (to us) museums downtown, grabbed ice cream sodas at the Biedenharn Coca Cola Museum, revisited Vicksburg NB, and finished our day with dinner at Walnut Hill Restaurant.

Yesterday we just hung out at LaFleur’s Bluff SP. Over 4 days we got in…

Visits to 2 new National Park Sites and 2 revisits:

• Natchez Trace National Parkway (#35-Revisit), 2 days, Mile Post 0 to 131.
• Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail (#234-Revisit).
  Highlights of the latest visits to the 2 include:
  • Cowles Mead Cemetery (Milepost 88.1), where we had lunch on our travel day, and took our picture of Lizzy on the Natchez Trace!
  • A short hike on the NST at Yockanookany (Milepost 108 – 109.5), where we lasted about a mile and a half, before deciding that walking mostly on the Parkway wasn’t fun!
  • Cypress Swamp (Milepost 122), where we walked around a small Tupelo/Bald Cypress Swamp (this time, NOT IN the water)!
• Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument (#235), where Medgar Evers was assassinated on June 12, 1963. It was the first murder of a nationally significant leader of the American Civil Rights Movement and became a catalyst for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Myrlie Evers, who will be 91 next month, continues to promote issues of racial equality and social justice.
• Vicksburg National Battlefield (#31-Revisit), where we visited the museum and drove the northern loop road and made a few stops, like at the USS Cairo.

Visits to other sites in Jackson & Vicksburg

• The Mississippi Capitol in Jackson (#34), where we got a tour and got brought onto the House Floor by a Mississippi Representative, with a number of amusing stories.
• The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, an amazing museum in Jackson, where we had just a couple of hours to see…maybe ~20% of it? But we did catch the movie about Medgar Evers.
• Jesse Brent Lower Mississippi River Museum in Vicksburg, very cool museum about life on the Mississippi River, the Mississippi watershed (3rd largest in the world), the 1927 flood, the Mississippi River Commission, the US Army Corps of Engineers, and the M/V Mississippi IV, a workboat and a flagship for the Mississippi River Commission, which we toured.
• The Old Depot Museum in Vicksburg, which had, among other things, several model railroads and many boat/ship models

Off for ~3 weeks in Alabama

For more pictures, see (in-work) Adventure Album:  Confederacy & Civil Rights

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