Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Wed. Nov. 7, 2012:  I woke up this morning realizing that I had to get moving if I'm going to be in Livingston by Thursday - so today was all about driving!  I left the campsite at 10:00 a.m. and pulled into tonight's site in Louisiana at 7:30 p.m. - whew!
I really wanted to drive along the Natchez Trace Parkway - so I spent the first 3 hours doing just that.  Interesting, beautiful place - the parkway cuts right through the old historic path used by American indians, settlers, etc. - lots of historic sites along the road. Truly spectacular scenery!  However, possibly not the greatest place to drive a 28 ft. RV - narrow lanes, no shoulders at all, and both sides drop off very close to the road.  Luckily, there's practically no traffic, but still - not a lot of chances to really take in the scenery.  If I'd been driving a car, now . . . or better yet, riding a horse (horseback is really the way to see this parkway!).
I set myself the goal of crossing most of Louisiana and staying at a particular campsite - and to that end, I set my GPS with the address of the campsite without really checking a route - never again!  I ended up driving for two solid hours after dark down narrow country roads, speeding up on the straightaways and slowing down for the posted curves.  (My philosophy has always been - if you're driving where you don't want to be, drive faster so you don't have to spend so much time there - served me well here, although it made for some hairy moments - oh well, I was too pissed off at myself to be nervous).
Hey - I just figured out how to do captions!

A path for horses and their riders in the Natchez Trace Parkway

Interesting . . .

Beautiful Trace trees

Quaint little bridge over nothing!

More Trace trees

This is the actual roadway - not too steep sides in this section!

Welcome Centre just as I entered Louisiana

That's a map of Louisiana

The highway - many, many boring hours spent on this one!  The interesting parts were all in the dark, so I didn't see anything at all!