What a great night's sleep. So very quiet and a very comfortable bed. We finally met our hostess - Donna - she is an employee of the French Camp Academy, and her job is to manage the French Camp B&B. She confirmed what we thought the school owns the entire town of French Camp or at least most of it. She says a few individuals do own their own homes but most rent or lease from the school.
Donna had prepared an excellent breakfast - fruit, scrambled eggs, bacon, cooked apples, a grits and cheese casserole, and biscuits and jams. No one left there hungry! There was a couple from Nashville, another from Richmond VA, us, and 3 ladies (never did catch where they were from). This is about half capacity. She handles the breakfast, the reservations and payments, and students come in and clean each day. Smooth operation.
We drove around the entire community of French Camp before we left - a post office, a bakery, a Dollar Tree, a small hardware store, a secondhand store, a couple churches and of course the school. There were dorms, classroom buildings, a gym, football field, a swimming pool and much more. Donna told us there is a large summer camp program that brings in another group of youngsters for 2-week sessions all summer long. So, this is a thriving but small and rather remote community. Reminds me a little of Holston Home in Banner Elk and maybe Washington County Academy that used to be over around Jonesboro - long closed now. Google tells me the population of French Camp is 250...so I wonder if that includes students?
We were headed south about 9:15. A bit cloudy today but by mid-morning the clouds were for the most part gone. We had almost 200 miles of the Trace left but most of the morning was nothing unusual to stop for. We stopped at a Cypress Swamp that was interesting, several "stand" locations, and a couple more Indian Mounds.
As we reached the Jackson area we got off at the Ridgeland Exit to buy gas and stopped in a Kroger to replenish our lunch stash. We got right back on the Trace and never even saw Jackson. Nice Bypass for a busy large city. Maybe we will take it on the way home! Ben reports he is getting more than 25 mph in the Sprinter. Says he has it on auto drive at 50 mph and thinks that is about optimum for the sprinter. Since we left Franklin I don't think we have been on highways other than the trace for more than 50 miles in Florence and Tupelo.
We stopped at Rocky Springs for our picnic lunch and a much-needed bathroom break. The main bathroom was closed so we headed to the campsites and found they had a working bathroom. This Rocky Springs area was the setting of the book by Nevada Barr that Jane was reading. Well just finished and got the second on Libby.
We then stopped at a section of sunken trace - we remembered being here on our trip in 1996. It was more of a hike down than we had remembered but the up and down into the sunken trace was worth it for the feel of walking along that path that had been trod so long ago!
The next stop was a huge disappointment - the one "stand" that is still standing on the entire trace is Mount Locust; and it is near the end of the trace - mm15.5 to be exact. Jane had really been looking forward to seeing it. The sunken trace and not seeing Mount Locust were the two strongest memories of that trip in 1996. It was under construction or some such as I recall. Well, today the entire exit was closed - no explanation just closed.
The last stop was Emerald Mound - the second largest Indian Mound in the US. The largest is Cahokia near St. Louis. Ben was really looking forward to it. It did not disappoint. When we arrived, we both remembered it. Ben climbed up to the top of the large flat mound, but Jane was pleased to stay below.
It was about 3:30 when we arrived in Natchez. The visitor center was closed - under construction - so we went on to our hotel hoping they might have some travel info on Natchez. Jane ordered some about 4-5 weeks ago, but it did not arrive before we left. So back to the trusty computer and Trip Advisor.
Jane wants to tour one of the antebellum homes tomorrow morning, but had no idea which one would be best. This is still in the Spring Pilgrimage season and there are tons of homes to select. But first things first - dinner. We chose Roux 61 which was a few miles south of town. Wow, we chose well. We ordered two different entrees so we could share and sample two Cajun dishes. We had Catfish LeBeaux (catfish with crawfish eteuffee) and Crawfish Pasta. They were both excellent. We had never had crawfish before; so, now have had it two different ways. We saw one place across the river where you could have a "bag" of steamed crawfish with butter and corn - but only on weekends. After eating them tonight I believe getting enough of the small bits of meat from the shell would be a LOT of work!
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| Crawfish Pasta |
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| Catfish Lebeaux |
Made it back to the hotel - Hotel Vue which Ben got from his Choice Hotel site. It is interesting - high on the bluff above the Mississippi, it is a very large 3 or 4 story hotel not your normal Comfort Inn or other Choice Hotel. The rate was pretty good - well the room is nice, nothing fancy but clean and good bed. You can tell it is rather old from the carpet and furniture. Guess Choice Hotels had bought it for an investment and will remodel....it could be an outstanding location if in another town. This town does not seem to be able to support all the hotels and restaurants it has. This is right in the midst of the spring travel season and there are only 20 cars in the parking lot! The population of Natchez is less than 15,000 and looks like it is declining. Tourism is their main business and that does not seem to be going so great right now. Only bad thing is there is no breakfast so we will have to drive a bit to find some breakfast tomorrow.
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