Tuesday - to the Natchez Trade, April 29

Tuesday.  Today we are heading out of Vincennes.  After much debate and map-studying, Joe picked a roundabout route -- first to Nashville, then onto the Natchez Trace Parkway all the way to Natchez, Mississippi.  So, we began.

We got on the road about 10:30 a.m., after several, several trips up and down the stairs with final loading.  It was windy, then sunny, and eventually we caught up with the rain about 1:00 p.m.  As we traveled across northern Kentucky, it was evident that they have not been able to start farming yet -- in Vincennes, the farmers were hitting the fields hard, working early and late, trying to get some planting done before the next rain.  But the wheat is further along here, and looked pretty in the fields.

We changed time zones as soon as we left Knox County, so we lost an hour.  We managed to actually drive PAST a White Castle Hamburger joint in Owensboro, KY, and had a nice lunch at a Cracker Barrel.  It was a pretty drive down through Kentucky on Hwy. 431.  We did have to stop for road construction once, while the machine mulched part of a tree.

 We crossed the Tennessee State Line about 2:35 (local time), and hit Nashville at rush hour, of course.

 It took us a while to find the beginning the Natchez Trace, we had to circle back once, but we got on it just about 5:00.  Our traveling friends had told us about the Trace several years ago, and we had actually traveled a small piece of it in 2010, on our way to Graceland.  Almost immediately, we saw a couple of turkeys, then 2 deer crossed the road.  I didn't get any pictures of any wildlife, but we did see some.

The Trace runs 444 miles through 3 states and "10,000 years of history."  It was established as a unit of the National Park System in 1938.  Amazingly, there is not a single stop sign or traffic light on the entire 444 miles, and the speed limit is 50 mph.  We LOVED it.  Just our style! I didn't get a photo of the first mile marker, but I finally did.  These were intermittent the entire length of the Trace, sometimes every mile, sometimes a little less frequent.

There was very little traffic, and because we were going 50 or less, we could take in the natural beauty all around us.  Forests, blooming trees, meadows, rivers, creeks, and wildflowers filled our windshield.  Many roads entered and exited the Trace, but none of them required us to stop.  We crossed lots of highways on overpasses so we could see the highway below. 

There are also a lot of bicyclists on the Trace, and we share the road with them.  There are no businesses right on the Trace, so it's a little tricky finding fuel and lodging.  We lucked out Tuesday night and spotted a campground at an overpass just off the Trace about 5:45.  We also lucked out on the weather.  The night before, this campground had received 5-6 inches of rain and had some flooding, but the river or creek was back in its banks tonight.  The host gave us a recommendation for dinner in a nearby town, and we enjoyed a very good Mexican meal there.  The campground host even showed up there too and invited us to join his table, but we didn't move over there.  As we came into town, though, there were several cops with lights flashing right on the edge of town.  Again, our host, very informative, said they had busted a mobile meth lab there. 

The campground, Fall Hollow at Hohenwald, TN, was actually quite nice, grassy, plenty of room, and only 7 miles from town (food and fuel).

We maintained our wildlife count throughout the day -- only the 2 deer we saw right after we got on the Trace, but we saw 11 turkeys in all.

After we ate, we stopped by Walmart to pick up a few groceries, and by then we were just beat.  I was too tired to do the blog, or anything else -- we just went to bed. 

We drove 290 miles today.  We picked up a map of the trace that gives items of interest by milepost, and we made a few stops, but not too many.  Mostly, we just enjoyed the drive.