AfricaTown, Alabama

[NOTE: there is a map of our entire road trip at the end of this photo essay.]

Our first stop in Alabama was the historic community of AfricaTown, just outside of Mobile. Founded by West Africans who were on the last known illegal slave ship, the Clotilde, in 1860 (international slave trade was banned in 1808), this community retained their West African customs and language into the 1950s. We drove to the visitor center and were disappointed to find only this sign (left) and the concrete remains of the building's entrance ramp (right). Apparently it was badly damaged in Hurricane Katrina and eventually collapsed. The town itself has an abandoned feel - a lot of boarded up and burned out houses. The few occupied houses had burglar bars on the windows and pitbulls guarding the premises - I didn't make me feel like getting out of the car and walking around so we moved on to our next destination.

Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, AL

Founded in 1877, this church gained national attention when Martin Luther King led the congregation from 1954–1960 and organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott from his office in the ground floor of the church.

National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery, AL

Seeing this newly opened memorial was at the top of my list of things to do in Alabama. The memorial is the nation’s first memorial dedicated to the legacy of enslaved black people, people terrorized by lynching, African Americans humiliated by racial segregation and Jim Crow, and people of color burdened with contemporary presumptions of guilt and police violence. The names of people lynched in each county in the United States are engraved on steel columns that hang from the ceiling. When you enter the memorial, you are at eye level with the columns and as you walk down the ramp, they begin rising above you until you are looking up at the hanging columns, reminding you of the act of lynching. It was impossible for me to not feel profound sadness and shame for this dark past that persists in our country today. There is also an off-the-charts excellent new companion museum, The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration with interactive exhibits and films with more information. We spent 3 hours there and could have spent all day exploring all the displays. If you are anywhere in vicinity of Montgomery, I highly recommend visiting this museum and memorial. Visit their website for more information

Elvis's Birthplace, Tupelo, MS

We temporarily left the civil rights trail behind and found ourselves driving through Tupelo, the town where Elvis was born. Since we were there, we decided to check out what all the fuss was about. What you can't see in the photo is the line of people waiting to have their picture taken sitting in the swing on the front porch - the place was crawling with tourists. I was amused to find the outhouse, its latrine with a secure clear plastic cover, making it impossible for anyone to take a dump in Elvis's outhouse.

Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, MS

Clarksdale has been home to many blues musicians and is now a mecca for Mississippi Delta Blues fans. It's also home to the Delta Blues Museum along with several juke-joints where you can see excellent live music. Ground Zero Blues Club, owned by actor Morgan Freeman, is one of the popular juke-joints. Literally everything inside, down to the salt & pepper shakers, is covered with graffiti and you are encouraged to add your own.

Mississippi River Canoe Trip Video (1.5 minutes long)

While in Clarksdale, we took a one day canoe trip with friends on the Mississippi River to explore its beauty and some of the human interventions built in attempt to control the river's path. A 70% chance of thunderstorms was in the forecast but luckily we only had a welcome cloud cover keeping the air at a cool 85 degrees. The river was flowing high with runoff from Hurricane Florence and we were able to paddle into an adjacent flooded willow forest which was beautiful and peaceful. This was my first time paddling on a big river and I definitely felt small when the large barges powered by. Our trip was guided by Quapaw Canoe Company and I can highly recommend them.

The Shack-Up Inn

We stayed in a former sharecropper shack at the funky Shack-Up Inn on Hopson Plantation just outside of Clarksdale. Sort of like a Burning Man theme camp meets Mississippi cotton fields, the grounds are comprised of former cotton plantation buildings and shotgun shacks that been restored only enough to accommodate 21st century comforts (indoor bathrooms, heat, air conditioning, coffee makers, refrigerators and microwaves). Each shack has a theme, like this "Caddy Shack" pictured here.

Cotton Field and storm

We drove through hundreds of miles of farmland, mostly growing cotton. Cotton is still a major crop in Mississippi with 1.1 million acres under production (down from the peak in 1930 of 4.2 million acres).

We drank the water in Greenville, Mississippi

No, this is not a glass of white wine, it's the color of the water from the tap in Greenville, MS. I was alarmed and puzzled that our hotel desk clerk didn't warn us about this but then again, it didn't smell or taste odd. Then I noticed the water in restaurants was the same color. It turns out that drinking the water here is legendary amongst writers: Greenville boasts more published writers per capita than any other town in the nation and writers come here to drink the water hoping to increase their chances of being published. The reason for the pale yellow color comes from the water source, an aquifer that was was once a flooded ancient cedar forest and it produces a brown tint that the current water treatment process can't get out.

The reason we went to Greenville wasn't to drink the water but to see this town that was profiled in John Barry's Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America. It was clear to us that the town never quite recovered economically from the flood and the resulting diaspora, which is why the town can't afford a better water treatment process to get rid of the color stain in the water.

Kudzu

As we drove south from Greenville to Vicksburg we started seeing these green sculpture mounds - trees, utility poles and abandoned shacks covered by invasive kudzu. Kudzu was introduced to the Southeast in 1883 at the New Orleans Exposition. The vine was widely marketed in as an ornamental plant to shade porches and well, it took over from there. It grows at an alarming rate – on average 6" a day and it continues to spread throughout the south.

Vicksburg

Vicksburg sits on the Mississippi River and was what President Abraham Lincoln called "the key" to bringing the war to a close. A lengthy siege at Vicksburg, led by General Ullyses S. Grant resulted in Vicksburg surrendering on July 4, 1863, giving the Union control over the Mississippi River. The green rolling hills of Vicksburg National Military Park are lined with monuments to soldiers from Confederate and Union states (the Illinois Monument is above right) and interpretive signage attempts to tell the story of each battle site but honestly, I found it nearly impossible to understand given the topography and forest vegetation - what I needed was a 3-d model of the present day park to give me context and that wasn't part of the interpretive center materials. Over 620,000 soldiers died during the Civil war and Vicksburg National Cemetery (above left) holds the remains of 17,000 Civil War Union soldiers, 75% of whom are unknown, marked by the smaller square blocks.

Visiting Vicksburg and reviewing this chapter in the Civil War reminded me why some people have strong feelings about Second Amendment and State's Rights.

Abandoned Mississippi River Basin Model, Jackson, MS

The Mississippi River Basin Model is a large-scale hydraulic model of the entire Mississippi River basin, covering 200 acres (by comparison, the San Francisco Bay Model covers 1.5 acres). Constructed during WWII by the Army Corps of Engineers using German POW laborers, it was in use until 1973 when computer modeling made it obsolete. It now sits, abandoned, in a city park outside of Jackson, MS. The former pump houses are derelict buildings, with large holes and graffiti but the actual concrete model is quite intact and it was fun to try to find parts of the river we had visited. Anyone who knows me well can appreciate that this was a highlight for me - I have a fascination with abandoned sites and to have this be about the hydrology of a river made it even more delightful.

Medgar Evers Home, Jackson, MS

African-American civil rights activist Medgar Evers (1925-1963) lived in this home located in the first planned middle-class subdivision for African-Americans in Mississippi after World War II. On June 11, 1963, Evers attended a meeting of civil rights groups in Jackson to formulate a response to Alabama Governor George Wallace's actions to prevent African-Americans from enrolling in the University of Alabama. Arriving home around midnight, Evers was shot in front of the carport by a sniper hiding in an undeveloped lot across the street. The bullet passed through Evers, through the living room window, and through the wall into the kitchen before coming to rest on the counter. Evers died early the next morning. The interior has been restored and shows the bullet hole in the wall separating the kitchen and living room as well carefully positioned crime scene photographs in the living room and kitchen to help tell the story, such as the photo on the right, showing where the bullet came through the living room window.

The Natchez Trace

We drove part of the Natchez Trace Parkway (a 500-mile long NPS National Scenic Byway) from Jackson to Natchez, stopping to hike along some stretches of the "old trace." This timeworn scenic path stretches diagonally across Mississippi, cuts a corner through Alabama and ends in Nashville, TN. Over 8,000 years old, it was an ancient Native American trail that was widened into a road by trappers, traders and missionaries. Today there is a paved 2-lane scenic highway from Nashville to Natchez but you can still hike parts of the old path that are sunken from thousands of travelers walking on the easily eroded loess soil.

During the 1800s, Traders called Kaintucks transported agricultural products, coal, and livestock down the Mississippi River. When they reached New Orleans or Natchez, they sold their boats as lumber and then walked back on the Natchez Trace to Nashville. I can only imagine how vulnerable the Kaintucks felt, walking on this sunken path with all their cash, aware that bandits could ambush them from above at any time.

As large as it looks

While walking along the sunken trace, we had to be careful to not walk right into spider webs like the one of this Golden Silk Orbweaver (Nephila clavipes). Female spiders can be up to 3" in length and this one had a body that was 1-1/2" long. They aren't poisonous but still, who wants a spider that big crawling on you?

Sunset on the Mississippi in Natchez

We visited the charming town of Natchez, known for its well preserved antebellum mansions. We stayed in a cute little AirBnB cottage right on the bluffs overlooking the river and this was the view out our front door. Every year in the spring and fall, Natchez Pilgrimage Tours take place where many of the mansions that are not open year-round open their doors to the public and we happened to be there during fall pilgrimage. After having spent so much time exploring slavery and civil rights, we didn't have the appetite to tour the former mansions of wealthy white Southerners but we did take one tour of an unusual unfinished mansion, Longwood, which we found really interesting.

Old River Auxiliary Control Structure

I really wanted to see the Old River Control Structure described in John McPhee’s essay Atchafalaya (in The Control of Nature). It’s a floodgate system on a side channel of the Mississippi River in central Louisiana known as “Old River” and regulates the flow of water from the Mississippi into the Atchafalaya River, to “prevent" the Mississippi river from changing course. Between 1850 and 1950, the percentage of flow into the Atchafalaya River had increased from 10% to 30%. By 1953, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers concluded that the Mississippi River could change its course to the Atchafalaya River by 1990 if it were not controlled, since this alternative path to the Gulf of Mexico is much shorter and steeper. If this happened, the river would develop a new delta in southern Louisiana, greatly reducing water flow in its present channel through Baton Rouge and ;New Orleans causing serious economic repercussions.

Completed in 1963, the complex was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and consists of a navigation lock, low-sill and overbank structures, as well as the auxiliary structure (pictured above) that was constructed after the low-sill structure was damaged during the Mississippi River Flood of 1973. It also contains the only hydroelectric power plant in the state of Louisiana. Although it is currently preventing the Mississippi River from altering its course, some researchers believe that the likelihood of a major geologic event that will overwhelm the control structure and change the course of the river is increasing.

If you are interested in learning more, check out this webpage and John McPhee's book, of course!

Birds in the Atchafalaya Wetlands

I really, really, wanted to see an alligator on this trip so we took a boat tour on lush beautiful Lake Martin, part of Atchafalaya Basin wetlands system near Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. We saw an unbelievable variety and number of birds, and I could easily see why Louisiana has long been known as a "Sportsman's Paradise."

Alligators!

And I got my wish granted - not only did I get to see "an" alligator, I got to see 6 of them (4 pictured here). I had heard about bayou boat rides near New Orleans where they use marshmallows to bait the alligators to guarantee sightings on their boat tours so I was pleased that we got to see these giant reptiles without artificial bait. In case you are wondering, alligators are instinctively afraid of humans but can lose some of that fear with regular contact such as feeding them marshmallows (and maybe boat tours like this?).

What gnawed on this bench in the Atchafalaya Wildlife Refuge?

After seeing some alligators on our boat tour, I really wanted to see one "in the wild" so we took a hike along the Alligator trail in Indian Bayou, 28,500 acres of swamps and forests bordering the Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge. We were a little nervous walking through the dense forest, not because of the alligators but because we didn't have bright orange vests and hats to wear and it was hunting season. And then we encountered this bench that had been significantly chewed up - we sure didn't want to meet the animal capable of doing this to a bench! Although we never saw any, we wondered if it was nutria who were responsible for these impressive chew marks.

The Alligator Trail

I'm happy to report that we we didn't get shot by a hunter or gnawed on by nutria and we saw one alligator in the wild during our pleasant hike along the Alligator Trail in Indian Bayou. Hiking in the south is very different from hiking in the west: the trails are mostly flat and not very long (on average a few miles). However, the scenery is lush, the forests are densem and there are a lot of birds, so there was still lots to enjoy.

Map of our road trip

We completed this circuit in 13 days. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't try to cram in as much as we did - our days were fast paced and we sometimes covered long distances on 2-lane roads but all in all it was a memorable trip and I'm looking forward to our next trip to the south!