Great Loop side trips

Great Loop side trips usually mean trips taken by water off the main route.  We are expanding that meaning to suit our purpose.  We need a car to go home in a couple of weeks.  We were going to hang at Joe Wheeler State Park for a week, then rent a car to travel locally for a week, then go home for a week and be back in time for the rendesvous. The weather took a Michigan-like turn (highs in the 60's, lows in the low 40's) so we decided to get a car early and spend time in the car while it's chilly, then spend time at the state park pool and walking and biking here when it warms up in a few days.

"...And the cotton is high..." (And Mary's allergies are out of control)

Saturday, October 1st, we started for Shiloh National Military Park, but the local map indicated a visitor center for the Natchez Trace on the way.  Turns out the Cherokee, Alabama, visitor center is no longer open, but the Tupelo, Mississippi, visitor center is only about 60 miles further and the Tupelo National Battlefield is there and Tupelo, of course, is Elvis Presley's birthplace, so lets drive along the Trace to Tupelo.  Oh, wait, there's a sign directing us to the Coondog Cemetery.  Two of the couples on their boats in Florence had driven to this unique site, so let's give it a try.

It is WAY off the beaten path when approaching from Cherokee, AL, but we are not likely to find another, so we're glad we went.

The Natchez Trace follows an Indian trail (with "traces" of their footprints, thus the French called it a trace) that became a more defined path when Ohio River Valley farmers, including Abraham Lincoln's father Tom, rafted down the Mississippi to the Gulf, sold their goods, including the lumber from their rafts, then made their way back on foot.  The trace became a road followed by pioneers' wagons.  The advent of steamboats heralded the end of the popularity of the trace, since then, as now, people would rather ride than walk.  The current parkway parallels the original trace from Nashville, TN, to Natchez, MS.  Here John walks along a section of the original trace:

These are the graves of 13 unidentified Confederate soldiers along the old trace:

Indian Burial Mounds from about 2,000 years ago:

More scenes along the trace:

A beaver lodge

They never worry about sunscreen:

We crossed the Tennessee Tombigbee waterway.  We'll be down there in our boat in a few weeks:

The Tupelo and Brices Cross Roads battlefields have been pretty much swallowed by modern society.  These skirmishes were mainly to preserve Sherman's supply line as he marched toward Atlanta.

Elvis was born in this house his father built:

They lived here until they packed everything up (in the middle of the night) and headed for Memphis.

Did not make it to Shiloh National Battlefield today but we sure had an interesting drive.  We'll plan that for later in the week.  Arrived back at the boat just in time to watch Flogging Molly on Austin City Limits.  We are the only boat on the transient docks in front of the lodge.  Like the other state park docks we've visited, it's like anchoring out but we're tied to a dock with electricity, water, AND TV.  It will look very different here during the rendesvous, when every dock will be full.

Our only neighbor: