Our destination is Natchez State Park, just outside the town of Natchez, Mississippi. We have a nice camping spot overlooking the lake, in the middle of an old wood forest. We had to back up a long ways to get a picture of the top of the trees we are camped under.
We are finding that most of those one-hundred-feet-tall trees seem to have 98-feet-long vines hanging from them. This would be Mark practicing his Tarzan imitation on one of those vines.
Besides that nature trail, we also have a nice lake in our new state park. We love living in these natural places!
We are finding that because we are blessed to explore new places on a daily basis, it is hard to make special plans for special days. Every day is already special, so what can a couple celebrating their 37th Valentine's Day together do? We started the day by finding a new church to attend in the nearby city of Natchez. Then we spent the afternoon touring our new charming little city. Situated on the Mississippi River, being an important shipping harbor has led to part of its success.
But it was the fertile land that allowed its early citizens to amass enormous wealth. Before the Civil War, the town of Natchez had more millionaires per capita than any other city in the United States. Plantations, using enslaved labor to cultivate the land, grew huge cotton crops that financed antebellum mansions all over the river valley.
It's a beautiful city to drive, with entire streets lined with houses on the national register of historical places. You could play the game of trying to find all of the 109 registered places in town.
There are also two national historical parks in town. One is the William Johnson House, where we learned about the life of a freed black man who raised his family in Natchez before the Civil War. He was once a slave, but his barber business allowed him to purchased land and slaves to cultivate it.
The other national park is centered around another home in Natchez--Melrose. This was one of the dozen majestic Antebellum Homes that are open for tours.
There is much history in Natchez, including an intersection called "Forks on the Road." There's nothing to photograph there now, but at one time it housed the second largest slave market in the south.
So Natchez was an interesting place to spend Valentine's Day. That would include a lunch at the romantic "Pig Out Inn" with dessert at "Fat Mama's Tamales." We finished that with some home-made chocolate dipped strawberries.
The next day we were forecast to get a half-inch of rain, so we planned a day at home. That forecast was correct in one way--it did rain. But instead of a half-inch, we got 4.2 inches of precipitation. Our view out the front window looked something like this most of the day
The good news is that we know that we have no leaks in our motor home, because we surely would have found them with this downpour. Just to make a couple of Oklahomans feel at home, the Mississippi news channel announced that we were under a tornado watch all day. While we only saw wind and rain, six different twisters were confirmed on the ground in parts of Mississippi just north and south of us. We also lost electricity for much of the day, but not until after we finished baking the Valentine dessert that we were too busy to make on the 14th. A rainy day allowed us to bake a chocolate chip cookie dough cheese cake. After carrying around that cheese cake pan for over a year, it was time to finally put it to work!
We watched the level of the lake outside our window, wondering if we would have to move to higher ground. But we were glad to see that they were letting water out of the spillway to control the level of the lake. This spillway had been a trickle two days ago, but today it was a fury of water.
Happy Valentine's Day from Natchez, Mississippi!
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