Day 24 - Cypress Bend to Vadalia, Louisiana

Today we were hoping to reach Natchez, Mississippi, from our truly wonderful (and wet) camp in Cypress Bend, Louisiana, but it was not to be. The reason is we spent so much time in the charming town of Natchitoches that it had gotten to be 5:00 p.m. and we hadn't crossed the mighty Mississippi River, let alone found a camp for the night. So, we stopped on the Louisiana side in the little town of Vadalia.

Traveling on rural route 6 from Cypress Bend, and then along route 84, we encountered some wonderfully green countryside today. And when I say green, I mean GREEN. Then, about mid morning, we came upon Natchitoches (the natives pronouce it "Nak-a-dish") and we decided to do some walking and see the town.

Natchitoches bills itself as the oldest continually inhabited town in Louisiana. Founded in 1714 by Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, Natchitoches was originally established as a French outpost on the Red River to facilitate trade with the Spanish in Mexico. Once a bustling river port and crossroads, Natchitoches gave rise to vast cotton kingdoms along the river. Affluent planters not only owned charming country plantations, but kept elegant houses in town.

We found a great place to park about two streets west of the town's main street, a dirt lot provided free of charge by the town court and police department. Leaving the RV, we set off on foot to find the town museum, which we did just moments later. While the museum housed both a historical museum and a sports museum, we sort of breezed by the sports stuff (except for their display of a Bonneville Salt Flats Racer) and headed to the stuff we mutually love, the historic displays. They had everything from womens' fashions to a bale of cotton and everything in between.

Once more back on the street, we retraced our steps to the RV, had our lunch, then set off again to explore the town proper. I had seen, as we drove into town, all the wonderful old architecture and I was just itching to go shoot some photos. The main street in Natchitoches looks much as I imagine streets look like in New Orleans. Lots of iron lattice work balconies. Lots of brick. And gardens tucked into every nook and cranny. One house I really wanted to photograph was the "Steel Magnolias" house from the movie (photo left & above right) that we had seen as we drove down the narrow main street that morning.

There's lots of things to see and do in Natchitoches. We didn't even scratch the surface. We saw loads of B&Bs. We heard that there was a plantation you could visit east of town. There was even a river walk. I would have loved to stay in the area and explore more, but if we keep stopping every fifty miles to camp we're going to take a year to get home again. We just had to travel on, though we didn't leave town until 2:30 p.m.

After a really nice two plus hour run from Natchitoches we arrived in Vadalia, Louisiana. The RV park is right on the banks of the Mississippi River. I mean, it's about three hundred feet from where the RV is set up. Not since the spring of 1970 have I been this close to Ol' Man River. It was in that year that the U.S. Navy decided they'd send me to electronics school in Memphis (really Millington) Tennessee. I drove my car down from Chicago where I had been stationed since the previous October, and spent the next four months learning about resistors and capacitors and electrical theory and such. Unfortunately, while I understood electrical theory on paper, I didn't do so hot when I had to put the theory into practice and troubleshoot a broken radar unit.

I was in Memphis for four months and it was the first time that I had been south of the Mason-Dixon line. At the time I thought Tennessee was the hottest, muggyist, rainingist place on the planet. It never rained, as the saying goes, but it poured. And it didn't just pour, it would rain so hard you couldn't drive your car because the wipers were useless against the deluge. But I had some great times during that four months, as two or three fellow sailors and I would wander the countryside, whenever we were allowed, just looking for adventure. I was one of the only sailors at electronics school with his own car. Virtually the entire student body had come to Memphis directly from bootcamp and had not been to their respective homes yet.

It was on one of our adventures, that the bunch of us found our way to the eastern banks of the Mississippi where we all sat on a lazy afternoon in quiet contemplation, just watching the river roll by. None of us had ever seen anything so magnificent as the mighty Miss. Then, as we we sat there, we started to notice, way off in the distance, black clouds forming on the western horizon. Minutes later, before we could even react, the storm clouds came rolling towards us at the speed of a freight train. It seemed like in mere moments the blackness was overhead and it had started to rain in Tennessee's usual ferocious fashion. I still regard that afternoon as one of the most memorable of my life. (Note: the bridge above right is over the Mississippi from Vadalia to Natchez, Mississippi).