Vacation October 2014
Oct 14
We drove an hour to get to the Natchez Trace Parkway. There
was a hotel very close to the trace, but it was 30,000 points
rather than 20,000 points for the hotel where we stayed. But
the hotel where we stayed was farther from the trace than I
realized. Lesson learned (maybe).
We made several stops
on the trace -
. Someone's ferry house. The
old trace.
Jackson Falls
Gordon House Historic Site
Old Trace
There are many places along the length of the trace where you can stop and see the old original trace. There are other places where there is no parking spot, rather just a sign with an arrow point to "Old Trace."
This particular site was a good example. It is a long section of old trail. It was however a challenging place to get a good photo, with the very mixed lighting and colors.
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A couple of the first stops gave me a chance to
experiment with my new
Nikon
Camera. I had been taking plenty of photos but
I took the opportunity to do
some tests. I am pleased with the results
with both the zoom capability and the manual settings
capability.
See these additional photos
here. We missed our turn off to head
for Savannah and when we realized it, we turned around headed
back North. We had to back track about six miles. We had only
gone about two miles when I saw this big blur go by the right
side of the car. I notices rain drops in the blur but what
was it? Birds? And then Connie said, "A tree fell!"
I looked in the rear view mirror and saw a tree laying down
with the tip of it just touching the roadway. Had it been a
few feet longer or had grown closer to the road it would have
fallen directly on our car at the precise moment we drove by.
I made we wonder the rest of the time we were on the trace
when a tree might fall on us. We drove by many trees that had
fallen onto the road and had been cleared. Once that excitement was over, we were back at the exit and
headed for
Savannah, TN, and
down to the Shiloh battlefield.
We stopped in Savannah, TN for a milk shake. It was about 2PM local time, and we had gone a good while without anything to eat. The milk shake and an apple was our lunch and it tasted might good. Burger King does them right.
I have a second page just
on the battlefield tour because of the volume of material and the significance to me. We
stayed over night in Tupelo, MS (Holiday Inn Express). We were looking for
Vanelli's restaurant. It was rated as one of the best
restaurants in Tupelo. Both the GPS and my phone showed us
where it should be but it wasn't there. We were right in
front of our hotel so we went in and checked in. We asked the
desk clerk were Vanelli's was and the lady got a strange look
on her face and said, "You may have heard that we had a
tornado back in April? Well it was right out there. The
tornado took it. That empty lot right out there." It had
been directly in front of the hotel, and as the clerk said,
there was nothing but an empty lot now. So we had dinner at
Outback Steak House next door. They ruined Connie's steak and
then fixed her good one and didn't charge us for her or my
dinner.
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