The day started with Miss Mary's French Toast in the Garden Room at Monmouth followed by a stroll around the beautiful gardens in the company of bluebirds, cardinals, squirrels, turtles and Stretch the cat.
Having checked out - somewhat reluctantly, it has to be said - we headed north up the Natchez Trace Parkway , a 444 mile scenic drive that follows an old native American path from Natchez, Mississippi, to Nashville, Tennessee, towards tonight's destination, Jackson , capital city of the state of Mississippi. The most interesting place en route was the Mount Locust Inn and Plantation best described as a 18th/19th century Travelodge, originally one of 50 similar properties along the Parkway but now the only surviving example.
We hopped off the Parkway west on to Highway 27 to visit Vicksburg and specifically the site of the key Civil War battle Vicksburg National Military Park For a ridculously reasonable $15 we got to drive a 16 mile tour route around the site of the battle that took place between the defending Confederates and the attacking Unionists. The Unionists ultimately only won because the Confederates were starved, and ravaged by disease, in to submission on July 4th 1863. The Unionist graveyard contains over 17,000 headstones. Amongst the many fascinating exhibits along the tour is the salvaged wreck of the USS Cairo - an iron clad brown water (river) Unionist battleship that had the misfortune to be the 1st ship in history to be sunk by a mine.
Back east on Highway 27 we picked up the Natchez Trace Parkway again heading north and checked in at our overnight accommodation in Jackson, the Hilton Garden Inn Hotel once, in a former guise as the King Edward Hotel, the temporary site of OKeh records (in 1930): King Edwards Hotel
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