Two observations:
1. This blog has become a travel blog. Partly because we travel ALL THE TIME, and partly because when we travel I have time to write on it.
2. As road trip names go, this one is not our best. But we must have a name, and this is all we've got: "Mississippi's the place, by way of the Trace." I reserve the right to change it if one of us comes up with something brilliant.
Anyway, Livy and I set out after a lunch with Aaron for Nashville. Why did we go in that direction to get to Mississippi, you may ask. Because we are going to drive ALL THE WAY down the Natchez Trace if we can fit it all in. The Natchez Trace is a paved highway running down an old trail called the Natchez Trace. See, people in the West (Kentucky, Pennsylvania, etc) used to travel down the MS River and then walk back up the Trace. There were also apparently tons of Indians, outlaws, and mail riders. The road has tons of hiking (some of it along sections of the Old Trace), pretty overlooks and picnic spots, and historic sites of all kinds.
I used to drive it with my parents all the time when I was little. ALL THE TIME. Finally, as a teenager, I put my foot down. My MS history and government teacher father would have driven that damn road every holiday and read every placard along its 440 miles. But now, more than a decade later, it seems really fun to me again. Did it just take some time to stop being sick of it? Am I just old? Whatever the reason, that's the trip I chose this time.
Livy is a really good road-tripper, and this one is even better because she can follow our progress on the map of the Trace and get out all the time to run about. I am not sick yet of "Look, there was mile marker 423! Look, there was mile marker 422!" So far, it's just adorable. And I have learned that she will read ANYTHING if it is on a map. :)
So, we drove to Nashville today and started down the Trace almost at the very top. We started at mile marker 436, instead of 444, because of where our highway spit us out onto the Trace. We saw (and drove across) an awesome bridge (the Double Arch Bridge); we hiked a 1 mile round trip up to an amazing overlook where we saw patchwork fields and horses below us; we drove into an beautiful sunset; and we listened to almost all of The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis.
Tonight, we got dinner, grocery shopped to fill our cooler for tomorrow, checked into a hotel, and now we are working on Livy's Junior Ranger book for tomorrow. She is matching up footprints to animals and making coded messages in Choctaw.
1. This blog has become a travel blog. Partly because we travel ALL THE TIME, and partly because when we travel I have time to write on it.
2. As road trip names go, this one is not our best. But we must have a name, and this is all we've got: "Mississippi's the place, by way of the Trace." I reserve the right to change it if one of us comes up with something brilliant.
Anyway, Livy and I set out after a lunch with Aaron for Nashville. Why did we go in that direction to get to Mississippi, you may ask. Because we are going to drive ALL THE WAY down the Natchez Trace if we can fit it all in. The Natchez Trace is a paved highway running down an old trail called the Natchez Trace. See, people in the West (Kentucky, Pennsylvania, etc) used to travel down the MS River and then walk back up the Trace. There were also apparently tons of Indians, outlaws, and mail riders. The road has tons of hiking (some of it along sections of the Old Trace), pretty overlooks and picnic spots, and historic sites of all kinds.
I used to drive it with my parents all the time when I was little. ALL THE TIME. Finally, as a teenager, I put my foot down. My MS history and government teacher father would have driven that damn road every holiday and read every placard along its 440 miles. But now, more than a decade later, it seems really fun to me again. Did it just take some time to stop being sick of it? Am I just old? Whatever the reason, that's the trip I chose this time.
Livy is a really good road-tripper, and this one is even better because she can follow our progress on the map of the Trace and get out all the time to run about. I am not sick yet of "Look, there was mile marker 423! Look, there was mile marker 422!" So far, it's just adorable. And I have learned that she will read ANYTHING if it is on a map. :)
So, we drove to Nashville today and started down the Trace almost at the very top. We started at mile marker 436, instead of 444, because of where our highway spit us out onto the Trace. We saw (and drove across) an awesome bridge (the Double Arch Bridge); we hiked a 1 mile round trip up to an amazing overlook where we saw patchwork fields and horses below us; we drove into an beautiful sunset; and we listened to almost all of The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis.
Tonight, we got dinner, grocery shopped to fill our cooler for tomorrow, checked into a hotel, and now we are working on Livy's Junior Ranger book for tomorrow. She is matching up footprints to animals and making coded messages in Choctaw.
More tomorrow!
