Day 40--finishing the Natchez Trace

Sadly, this was really the last day of our six-week adventure. Tomorrow we’ll be beating a fast path to Indianapolis, with no interesting stops along the way. We had over 200 miles left to drive on the Trace, so we got on our way close to 8:30. It had been another cold night, down in the twenties but it went above freezing as soon as the sun rose. Today we learned that President Jefferson ordered the army to clear the Natchez Trace beginning in 1800 because Mississippi seemed so remote that the government was afraid that it would decide to become a separate country. The Trace was meant to serve as the postal route, along with continuing to be a return route for “Kaintauks” who had floated a cargo of goods down the Mississippi to Natchez, sold the boat as lumber and were heading home. We also learned more about the Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes who controlled most of the lands the Trace crossed. We drove out of Mississippi, across the corner of Alabama and into Tennessee over the course of the day. Among other things we saw today was the grave of Meriwether Lewis, who died from two gunshots (most likely self-inflicted) at Grinder's Stand. It was so interesting to see the insignia for the Lewis and Clark expedition with which we became so familiar on last summer’s trip. But it is sad to think that he died in so remote a location, on his way to Washington, DC to defend his government expenditures for the expedition (he was cleared of all charges posthumously). We stopped at several Paleo-Indian Mound sites, some from the time of Christ. How strange to think that there were thriving communities of natives trading over thousands of miles for copper, flint and shells at the same time and longer ago than Jesus! We took a few opportunities to walk again on the original Trace where it has been maintained as a pathway. At our final stop we came upon an armadillo, peacefully rooting beside the trail and hardly concerned about our presence. We passed over the award winning bridge spanning Birdsong Hollow and shortly after reached the end of the Natchez Trace Parkway. What a jolt it was to return to an interstate with its traffic and billboards and big trucks racing! We went around Nashville and got to Bowling Green, Kentucky, our twelfth state of the trip. There was a KOA close to the freeway where we could have electricity for the first time in three nights, and Wi-Fi for the first time in a week or more. We’ll empty the trailer of all water in order to get back to the frigid north this weekend.