Mark's Notebook

Racing the rain

We've settled into a bit of a routine this week. We get up around 10 am and leave the hotel just around check-out time. We usually try to find something to eat, so we don't really get going until noon-ish or later. In the afternoon we visit something. Some time after 5 pm when most of the museums and sights close, we get on the road for at least a couple of hours. We find a hotel and we stay up until around 1 am reading our bibles and checking stuff on the internet. We've had internet access just about every night since we left the gulf coast.

For the first few days this week, there was heavy wind and rain in the late afternoon, and on at least two days, there were tornado warnings withing 30 miles of us. We bought a radio that has weather band but it is useless. Fortunately, when there are tornado warnings, they interrupt the radio stations using the emergency broadcast system. So if we are listening to the radio we do get some indication what is happening near us.

Monday, May 8

Today we were in Natchez, Mississippi. This is a beautiful old town on the Mississippi River. It is also the starting point of the Natchez Trace Parkway, a road that winds through beautiful greenery near the Natchez Trace, an old trail that has been in use for hundreds of years by indians and explorers of the area.

We visited an old mansion, the Melrose Estate, which is a part of the National Park system. This mansion was built in the 1820's, and it is an example of greek revival architecture. Here is a small picture of the building. It is a beautiful building, but IMHO the tour was not worth the fee we paid for it. Mary really liked it, though. Even though it is a large building, on the bottom floor it has only the large hallway, a dining room, a drawing room, a living room, and a library. On the upper floor there is the large hallway and four bedrooms. All the rooms are large and they are decorated with the original furniture, which was passed down with each purchase of the property. I guess I just expected more from such a large building. The large central hallway is used to create an air-conditioning draft during the hot summer, but it does not have any furniture so it can't be used for anything else. There are a few interesting features like the ceiling fan in the dining room. It is a large blade that swings back and forth creating a draft, instead of a set of blades arranged in a circle. It has a rope that had to be pulled by a slave in order to operate it.

Then we headed up the Natchez Trace Parkway. It is a two-lane road without much cross traffic, nestled in grass and trees. The scenery doesn't change much, and it's hard to get a grasp on exactly where you are or how far you've driven. It is beautiful and relaxing, though. It was on this road around 6 pm that we first encountered a lightning storm and heard tornado warnings on the radio. The potential for tornadoes was behind us, but coming our direction, and about 20 or 30 miles away. However, the storm was heading roughly southeast and we were headed northeast, so we didn't worry too much but we paid close attention. We figured we were pretty safe after the warnings ended about 8 pm and things dried up around us.

We stayed in Jackson tonight. We have come about 100 miles along the parkway, which winds 300 miles through Mississippi and continues more than 100 miles farther into Alabama and Tennessee, ending in Nashville. We will continue tomorrow until we get bored with it.

Tuesday, May 9

It rained all night last night. We are thinking seriously about just staying in the hotel today. What can we do in all this rain?

I found an advertisement for the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science. It is not too far from where we are staying. (Well, Jackson is just not that big.) Anyway, the museum was interesting. It has both an indoor and an outdoor setting. The indoor setting includes dioramas depicting Mississippi wildlife, an aquarium, and a reptile room with live alligators and turtles. There is also a rotating temporary exhibit, and at the time we visited, it was an exhibition of the photography of Mississippi native Stephen Kirkpatrick, who has written several books. The exhibit included not only his photographs of Amazon wildlife, but also tapes that let you hear the jungle in all its cacophony.

The outdoor portion includes walks along several trails through swamps. They promise lots of wildlife, but other than a group of turtles on a log and several lizards on a stairway, all we encountered were more biting bugs.

Then we continued up the Natchez Trace Parkway toward Tupelo. But it started raining again, there were more tornado warnings, and the road, as beautiful as it is, got boring. We decided to get off the parkway and head north toward Memphis. We were disappointed that in Natchez there were no river cruises. We hope to find a riverboat ride in Memphis. Also, the storms seem to be originating in west Mississippi and Louisiana, then moving across Mississippi to the southeaster toward the gulf. So maybe we can escape the rain by heading north.

Late tonight we arrived in the Memphis area. We found a motel in West Memphis, across the Mississippi river in Arkansas.

Wednesday, May 10

It rained again all night. It was intermittently very rainy in the morning, and constantly very windy. Our choices for today include a riverboat ride and Graceland. Both seem to be lousy choices for a rainy day. We're trying to figure out which direction to head to escape the storm. But now we seem to be right in the middle of the storm, which covers several states. Our best chances for escape seem to be toward the west into Oklahoma or Kansas, but neither of those states has sights that interest us. We ran some errands, then ate at a Waffle House near our motel. While sitting at the Waffle House, things appeared to clear up a bit. Mary likes to talk about a "sucker hole" in the clouds but things actually do like very clear on the western horizon, where these storms are coming from. I called the riverboat company and they say they will indeed do their 2 pm cruise unless the wind kicks up or not enough people sign up. The boat includes two outdoor decks and one enclosed deck in case it rains again.

This sounds like a better option than Graceland, which costs more, and part of the Graceland tour would be outside, self-guided, slogging through the wet lawn and mud. Even if the rain let up.

The riverboat cruise ended up two people short, and they were going to cancel, but each of us chipped in enough that as a group we could buy two more tickets and the tour was a go. The cruise itself was not too notable. We did go under a few bridges, some of which were very old. We were informed of a few things like the bluffs on the Mississippi side as opposed to the flat flood plain on the Arkansas side. This means that when the river floods, everyone comes over to the Mississippi side to stay dry. There were also some eddies under one of the bridges, where the river would run backward on the top. Other than that, there was not really much interesting to see.

However, they did discuss the role of Memphis as a stop on the underground railroad, as a center of riverboat traffic of various kinds, and as the birthplace of the blues. Some of these things were interesting, but we could have learned them without taking the cruise. The cruise itself was relaxing and we thought it mostly worthwhile afterward.

We tried driving around downtown Memphis. We found the BB King club, the Gibson guitar factory, and the Museum of Rock & Soul. But they allow no street parking anywhere, and the only parking lot we found was $10 flat rate. So we decided to pack up and find our next destination.

For some reason, we still think we can head north to escape the rain. We decide to head for St. Louis, and see how far we can get. We get as far as Sikeston, where we found some factory outlets. Mary didn't really want to stop, but there was a scrapbooking outlet store and I thought Mary should at least give it a chance. As it turned out, Mary found several things she needed in the scrapbooking store.

There was also a Bible outlet and I found a new Bible there. It is New Living Translation, smaller than my present bible, with a zipper cover built in, and plenty large print for my old eyes. It cost more than I wanted to spend, but I figured it will be a nice smaller bible to take to Europe later this year. Also, I will be finishing my present bible within the next few days, so I will need a new one pretty soon.

We also found a shoe store and a store with socks, where I replaced the tennis shoes and socks that I ruined while working in Mississippi. I had really needed new shoes since before we left, but there was no time when we were home, and no opportunity until just now.

We continued up toward St. Louis, but it started raining again and it got worse as we went along. I figured we could either stop before St. Louis and probably have to unload in the rain twice, or continue as far as possible, and if we can stay two nights in St. Louis, we only have to unpack once. We eventually found a nice place, inexpensive, on the west side of town in an area called Westport.

Let's pray for dry weather tomorrow.

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Last updated Tuesday 13 May 2008