http://trackmytour.com/MrRdx
You can follow the route we have taken by pasting that link into your browser.
Now for Vicksburg!
We arrived on Friday afternoon and really did nothing more than settle in and watch some basketball games in an early round of the NCAA men's basketball tourney! Early on, we had decided that we would take a break from the campers and that we'd spend a couple of nights in a motel. Vicksburg was perfect, as it has a good supply of motels and the dates coincided with March Madness.
On Saturday morning we headed to Vicksburg National Military Park and drove around because to walk the park would have been in excess of 18 miles, not something we thought we wanted to do. The park is wonderful; filled with monument after monument from all the states whose soldiers fought at Vicksburg. There were multiple monuments from states like Ohio, and massive monuments for Illinois and some of the southern states. Michigan's monument is solemn and, as with many of the sculptures on monuments, the themes portray heroism, victory, suffering, or death.
One of the highlights of the park is the USS Cairo (a Civil War metal clad gun boat). It was discovered in the 1950's after having been sunk in a nearby bayou in 1862! Now raised and suitably renovated, it is on display with many artifacts in the attached museum. The ship itself was one of six built during the Civil War in 100 days for a cost of slightly more than $100k, and was used by Grant to gain control of the Mississippi River.
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| row of cannons |
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| David and Paul inside the Illinois memorial |
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| exterior of Illinois memorial |
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Memorial cemetery
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| A southern general who died in the battle at Vicksburg |
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| Corner of one of the larger southern state's monuments |
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| View of the Cairo |
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| Structural view of Cairo |
All-in-all the battlefield park is a must see for anyone coming near Vicksburg!
On Sunday morning we headed out to Clarksdale in northwestern Mississippi to experience some blues music. Unfortunately the wind and cold and lack of anything being open in the city reduced our visit to walking around the downtown and seeing the outsides of some of the very famous joints where the blues greats played (and still do play). We did eat our lunch in a wonderful place called "The Lady on the Levee" which was serving lunch at a set price. One got a choice of main dish, two sides, plus dessert. We were really enjoyed the food and the environment.
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| Inside Lady at the Levee restaurant |
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| One of the chefs at the restaurant |
There were no attractive RV campgrounds in Clarksdale, so we headed on up the road to Memphis. We decided to head to Memphis and stay in an RV park there...the Graceland RV Park located right behind the Heartbreak Hotel, both of which are across the street from Elvis Presley's Graceland Mansion...oh yes, located on Elvis Presley Blvd.
We spent two nights there and were humored by the park's street names...Hound Dog Alley, etc. Paul toured Graceland in the morning while we read and did other things while he was away. Then in the afternoon we took the city bus into the city; something all the local women we asked said they would not do. So we did it! No problems, we were the only white folks on the bus but who cares. We took a tour of Sun Records Studio (they recorded early Elvis, along with Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Louis, Carl Perkins, etc.) and then on to Beale Street downtown; few tourists braved the elements to se the sights, but this didn't seem to discourage the shops, which all serenaded those who walked by.
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| David, Dee, and Paul waiting for the bus....cold? You bet. |
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| Inside the restaurant where we had dinner on Beale Street. Plus we got some music too. |
On Tuesday we drove the length of Tennessee and camped at a park in Chattanooga, which was full of families on spring break. We kept to the south as well as we could, as a big snowstorm was causing travel problems just to our north. Wednesday we drove into southwestern Virginia and saw much snow in the hills around us. Luckily there was nothing on the roads. We made it as far as Marion, VA, and stayed in a very pretty Hungry Mother State Park. It was cold and there was snow on the picnic tables, so we had the campground nearly to ourselves.
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| I-81 as we headed north on Thursday morning. A surprise to see more snow now than when we drove down on the same road over four weeks earlier! |
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