Friday dawned with clearing skies and a fresh clean appearance following the overnight rainfall. The bugs had been in full voice last night while I was enjoying the lightning storm and now the day shift was filling the air with, well, day-bug songs.
We headed South through Little Rock (well, around Little Rock -- the highway bypasses the city to the East), and picked up US-65 into Louisiana. Corn gave way to mile after mile of cotton fields ..."in dem ol' cotton fields back home". We were treated to harvest season. We saw lots of closed gin mills and some interesting equipment out in the fields. It appears that cotton ginning has gone mobile -- the fields are picked mechanically, cotton fed into mobile gins to remove the seeds, and then packed into special trucks that bale the cotton and transport it to the edges of the fields for later pickup. That's one in the photo to the left. Tarps are spread on top of the bales, and numbers, probably the supplier ID, painted on the sides.
About 30 miles outside of the little town of Lake Providence, we encountered a sight for Sore Seattle Eyes: it promised that somewhere ahead we would find "Jehovah Java". Ahhh.... now since leaving Wyoming, the most important, and sometimes most disappointing part of the morning ritual was finding espresso. I had offered to pack our LaPavoni for the trip, but Marilyn was sure that we would be able to find espresso on a regular basis. For once, I was right, but it was nothing to gloat about :-( Well, a sign closer to town again promised "Jehovah Java" ahead, and so we really started watching. We went though town, and saw a sign for a bakery, but no Joe. Hmmm.... Seems to me that the coffee should be close to the donuts, so we turned around and this time saw the sign pointing down another street. Oh bliss. The espresso was real good. Excellent, in fact. They import their beans from Seattle, and they ain't Starbucks! Starbucks, we both agree, is over-roasted and bitter and we only drink it when we are desperate. No, Jehovah Java was a real find and was a real nice coffee house with home made sandwiches and salads in a nice atmosphere. It was started by a Baptist minister who donates all his proceeds to his church and the shop, while obviously Christian, is tastefully so and doesn't smack you upside the head with preachiness.
On the way into Lake Providence we encountered a rain storm of biblical proportions -- the drops were as big around as marbles and bounced a foot off the pavement when they hit. I had the wipers on full throttle and still had a hard time seeing the edges of the road. It was dry while we enjoyed our lunch and espresso, and I noticed to my satisfaction that all the bugs had been washed off the car during the deluge. Just out of town we hit another rain squall almost as heavy as the first. It sure can rain down here!
We had been making good time so we decided to push on into Natchez instead of picking up the Trace in Jackson. So on we went further South, crossed the Mississippi, and pulled into the visitors' center about a minute before closing. There, a very nice young lady spent a good 15 minutes after her shift should have ended and told us how to get on the Trace in the morning, what we should do in Natchez -- and there is a lot to see there -- and even gave us motel recommendations. This sort of generosity and graciousness typified our interactions with everyone we met in Louisiana and Mississippi. It was a welcome change from our normal lives where it is common to have doors slammed in your faces if you show up close to quitting time.
We went to find the city's grand hotel, the Eola, but opted to look elsewhere when we heard the rates. But we did do a quick tour of downtown and were glad we decided to go the extra distance. Natchez is a wonderful old Southern town, spared from the destruction of the Civil War, and being renovated a bit at a time. We had to choose between a supposedly haunted prime rib place in the oldest Inn in the city, a place that has a reputation for the best steaks in town, or Fat Mama's Tamales with Knock You Naked Margaritas. Hoping for some good spicy food, we chose Fat Mama's. The tamales were OK, but too bland, and they only had pepper sauce to heat them up. What they really needed was some good green chili sauce. The margaritas didn't knock us naked, but they were pretty good. If I hadn't had to drive back to the motel I would have had a second one just to see what would happen :-) It was night time but hot and humid -- pretty miserable for a couple of people used to 65 degrees. The air conditioners poured excess moisture out of the rooms at such a rate that the walkways outside the rooms were slanted to take the water away from the building. Not much to do but crank it up towards "Ice Age" and hope that the room will get cool enough to sleep.
So this is where I started this blog, and once again it is way too late and I really need to get some sleep. We will do some tourist things here in Washington, D.C. tomorrow before we head towards the Indiana Amish community. Hopefully I will get a chance soon to write about the two fascinating days we spent coming up the Natchez Trace, our short day between Nashville and Knoxville, our shopping trip that included the Great Smoky Mountain Knife Company and the arts and crafts community out from Gatlinburg, the glimpse of the Biltmore Estate and Asheville, and the two days up the Blue Ridge Parkway. Ta ta for now...
2 comments:
If you had a second Margarita, you would have had to stay with Fat Mama.until tamalie.
Oh, my loving brother. . .
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