ON TO MISSISSIPPI AND LOUISIANA

 We hopped back on the Blue Highways after a couple of nights in Nashville.  Our intended plan was to take the NATCHEZ TRACE PARKWAY the 400 plus miles all the way to Natchez, but after 100 miles we made a change.  “Natchez Trace Parkway is a 444-mile recreational road and scenic drive through three states. It roughly follows the "Old Natchez Trace," a historic travel corridor used by American Indians, "Kaintucks," European settlers, slave traders, soldiers, and future presidents. Today, people can enjoy a scenic drive as well as hiking, biking, horseback riding, and camping along the Parkway.” (NPS brochure). We have enjoying the Blue Highways, but the trace was really slow.  Speed limit 45 mph, watch out for bicycles, and views, beautiful to a point.

I may have mentioned this before, but the scenic part involves trees. You can’t see past the trees which line both sides of the road.  After a while you crave for a view of something else.  So we hopped off the Trace and hopped back on the Blue Highways generally heading in the same direction.

We stopped in Jackson, Mississippi for a couple of days and I managed to get in a couple of early morning bike rides.  Being the state capitol a visit there was in store.

 

We continued south and found a RV park on an old plantation, with the plantation house serving as a B&B.  Located halfway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge in was a convenient for us to visit both cities.

The NATIONAL WORLD WAR II MUSEUM in New Orleans has been on my bucket list for a long time.  We were headed this way last year when our trip ended when Cathie fell and broke her knee in Kansas City.  This time we made it.  If you ever go, give it plenty of time.  I don’t was to say that I was disappointed, but the layout of the buildings made it confusing, at least to this old man.  Also some displays behind glass were so dimly lighted that it was difficult to see what you are looking at.  But overall it’s still a must see.  The best part, at least in my opinion, were the stories of different servicemen and women.  Told in letters, photos and in their own words, it brought home the sacrifice they made.

Since we were so close to the French Quarter we thought we would pay a visit.  But nooo, the place was packed with cruise ship passengers, it was near impossible just to walk through the masses.

As we are want to do, we paid a visit to the Capitol in Baton Rouge.  An imposing building due to its height of 24 stories, the entry was beautiful and without a dome, unlike most capitol buildings.  You do get to go to the top for a view of the city.  We learned about the assassination of Huey Long, the former Governor and US Senator in a back hallway of the capitol.

 HUEY LONG was shot a month after announcing he would run for president in 1936. He was at the Capitol building attempting to oust a longtime opponent Judge Benjamin Henry Pavy. “House Bill Number One,” a re-redistricting plan, became Long’s top priority; if it passed, Judge Pavy would be removed from the bench.  At 9:20 p.m., moments after the House passed the bill, Pavy’s son-in-law, Dr. Carl Weiss, a physician from Baton Rouge, approached him in the Capitol’s main hall and shot him in the abdomen from four feet away., Long’s bodyguards immediately gunned down Weiss. Long was rushed to a nearby hospital, where emergency surgery failed to stop his internal bleeding. His last words were, “God, don’t let me die. I have so much to do.”  The coroner who conducted the autopsy on Weiss said he quit counting bullet holes at 60.