Natchez and heading south

December 7, 2015 - published December 16, 015

After a peaceful night of good sleep in Natchez, I headed off to see some of the famous Antebellum homes in town.

First stop, Melrose, built in the 1840’s, and lived in continuously until 1990 when it was acquired by the National Park Service. Fortunately, all the owners took pride in maintaining the original rooms and most all of the furniture original to the home was able to be located, almost all of it in the 4 huge rooms in the attic.

The NPS has taken great pains to restore both the building and the furniture and has done things like reproducing the original oil cloth flooring and carpets on to linoleum so that tourists can be shown around the rooms. Sections of the original carpet and flooring are still in existence and they lay sectioned off from the walkways. Unless you look closely, you’d never know that you were walking on new flooring.

They did have to rip out the new style bathroom and put back in the type of fixtures that were original to the house…obviously lavish at the time but a little unsuitable to todays’ living standards!!

Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the inside of the home. Yes, you’re allowed to take pictures but only with the flash turned off and silly me, had no idea how to turn the flash off on my camera. It’s a guided tour with a very knowledgeable docent and she wasn’t waiting for me to run to the van to read the manual..sigh!!

After spending another hour or so wandering the grounds of the Melrose, I headed off to see some other homes marked on my tourist guide to Natchez. The first stop yielded a quick turn around in the driveway as the home is now a B&B closed to the public. It’s open but only twice a year for a 2 week period each time for an antebellum celebration tour. Now was NOT it!

I made a beeline for the Welcome Centre to find out which of the homes I could see. The Natchez Tourism Welcome Centre is indeed a very impressive building with a very large parking lot. However, to my dismay, it’s very much commercialized. Even the 20 minute video of what to see in Natchez has a fee attached to it.

Hmmm, okay, let’s ask about parking. For the first time since I started out, the staff at the tourism desk were less than helpful. Well, there’s no real parking lots and no Ma’am there’s no lot at the head of the walking trail. Yes, ma’am, most of the streets downtown are one way, but no, I can’t really tell you which way, I’m not familiar with that area. Yes, Ma’m these homes are open but you can either pay for a group tour or pay for each one individually.

Can you tell that by this time, I was just a little disappointed in Natchez… way too touristy, commercial, make money big time for me. I don’t mind paying money for good value but absolutely detest a ‘grab the tourist buck’ attitude.

I grabbed a quick breakfast and headed back to the W/M parking lot to contemplate my next move.

Onward and south it is.

I crossed the bridge in to Louisiana, driving with one hand and camera ready with the other. Every state line where I’ve crossed at a bridge, has the ‘Welcome To XX’ sign hanging on the bridge right? Not here!!

I found my way to the Vidalia Welcome Centre and used their sign as my ‘Welcome To’ picture.

Obligatory Welcome To Picture

Inside, I immediately had my faith in welcome center staff restored. Zelma and I had a great ½ hour together and I left with a bagful of information from her including a map of Texas (I’m in far eastern Louisiana remember) and her urging me to go see Miss Betty in Avery Island.

No, I didn’t, I’ll save Miss Betty for another trip, it meant heading southeast instead of southwest. There was also no good places to camp in the area except those dreaded places called ‘RV Resorts’!

I plotted a course southwest via anything but interstates and got as far as Alexandria for the night.