We stayed three days at Vicksburg’s Ameristar Casino RV Park. Casinos can have some nice parks, and if you promise to gamble a certain amount, sometimes they’re free. Our’s was not the case, in price or quality, but we didn’t gamble either.
Instead we used our day to drive down to Natchez, MS, where there are many preserved antebellum homes that are open for tour - each one for $10-20 each. Unfortunately, Bill’s sciatica is still bothering him such that he doesn’t want to walk much yet. So we went to the Visitor’s Center, got a map, and drove around the town. At the Visiter’s Center, I learned that the US outlawed buying/selling of slaves from Africa in 1808. The slave trade continued up to the civil war because the middle-southern states provided slaves to the lower-southern states, sometimes by kidnapping, and “selling them down the river”. This is what the movie “12 Years a Slave” is based on. AND some freed slaves owned slaves themselves. Such an awful part of history that has to be carefully preserved and learned from. I loved the town - hated the history. The homes in Natchez were the town homes of the owners whose plantations were across the river in Louisiana.
The Natchez Trace Parkway is the preservation of the road traders would use to walk back home after floating their goods down the Mississippi. They would sell everything, including the lumber from their boats. But, of course, robbers knew these travelers had plenty of cash. The trip home could be treacherous.
BTW - there is an awesome National Civil War Battlefield Park in Vicksburg, which we saw with Brendan on our first trip around the US. So, we skipped it. Did you know there were iron-clad ships in these rivers during the civil war? The U.S.S. Cairo was the first ship sink by a torpedo in battle.
Hope you got some free ice cream on the longest day of the year!
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