Day 5 of the Great Trace Chase: Going Home

We got up on Saturday morning, had a little breakfast our of our cooler, and headed to our last big Trace location. We wanted to visit the Grand Village of the Natchez Indians that was on the south side of Natchez before we left town and started for home. There was a little museum with exhibits on pottery, religious ceremonies, dress, and diet of the Natchez Indians, a tribe descended from the Mississippian mound builders that we had been learning about all trip long. Outside, there were two mounds to climb and a reconstruction of one of their houses. We also hiked a nature trail on the property of the village.

After this last Indian site, we started home. W decided that instead of going the old boring route,we would go south from Natchez and drive along the beach at least for a while. It was a grey, rainy kind of day, but we still got out and padded around the beach in our bare feet with our pants rolled up to our knees. We touched our toes to the water, but it was COLD. Livy chased sea gulls for the first time.

After that stop, we drove for the rest of the day (a total of nearly 12 hours) toward home. We finished Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, both by Roald Dahl. Livy read to me from Phonics Pathways, her newly beloved reader. We ate fast food because we were sick of our stupid cooler. And when we reached home at nearly midnight, as I carried the sleeping Livy into the house, I said, "We're home, sweetie." She replied, still mostly asleep, "I love home."

Day 4 of Great Trace Chase and What I am Thankful For

Today, we left my mom's house and headed back to Jackson to start our final leg of the Trace where we left off before Thanksgiving. It was a full day, and some of our favorite things of the trip happened today.

The highlights:

1. We finished Matilda and started Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Livy likes Roald Dahl A LOT! She says he is tied with J.K. Rowling. I love these books too; they are like Narnia mixed with Jonathan Swift. Sharply satirical and heroic/fantastical at the same time. (Not that C.S. Lewis wasn't satirical, but this is acrid satire, very Swiftian.)

2. We hiked under a waterfall. It was a tiny waterfall, but it was so neat to climb underneath its overhang and put our hands in it from the back.

3. Livy climbed on everythings. She climbed the Sunken Trace (where the Old Trace is sunk way down below the treeline with lots of exposed roots), down into a ravine where she crossed a creek on a big log, and up several Indian mounds.

4. We walked through the remains of an old town and through its cemetery. We found the oldest grave, a lady who was born in 1778 and died in 1859.

5. We explored Mt. Locust, the only remaining inn from the hayday of the Natchez Trace. We did a scavenger hunt all over the grounds and inside the building, hunting up slave graves, magnolia trees, and furniture to hold chamber pots, among other things. Livy turned in the Junior Ranger book that she had been working on the whole trip here and got her badge. She and I agreed that this was one of the highlights of the trip. I liked the Pharr Mounds from Day 2 better, but Mt. Locust was a close second. The scavenger hunt made exploring really fun.

6. We climbed up (and Livy rolled down) the second biggest Mississippian Indian Mound in the counrtry, Emerald Mound. The sun was starting to set, and it was beautiful to look down over all the surrounding forests.

7. We reached the end of the Trace in Natchez at twilight and drove across the Mississippi River into Louisiana and back. I love the river; I always have. It's so fun seeing how wide it is, and I love the moment when half of the car is in Mississippi and half in Louisiana. Afterwards, we drove through downtown Natchez to look at their Christmas decorations, which are AWESOME

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A little Mexican food and several pages in our phonics reader later, Livy and I are settled into our motel, watching Phineas and Ferb.

This has been the most amazing trip. I just love traveling alone with Livy. She and I really get reconnected, and we do the most spontaneous, fun things. I would never do some of the things she pushes me to do, like jumping from hay bale to hay bale or climbing under a waterfall, even though it is off the path. It's awesome to listen to some many great books as we drive, and when we are together for long periods of time, she talks more than she does at home. Traveling together makes me feel so close; there are none of the distractions of home, just hanging out.

So this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for how cool Livy is, for her being the kind of kid who enjoys my wandering ways and who makes a good companion. I'm thankful for Aaron, too, who understands my need to be on the move when I start to feel like a cud-chewing cow. I love that he doesn't feel left out when Livy and I take off. (The truth is that he really likes the alone time, as much as I like the wandering.) And I am thankful for the big world full of wonders and marvels to experience.

Great Trace Chase: Day 3

Today, we set out early for another full day on the Trace. We made it as far as Jackson before heading east to my mom's house for Thanksgiving. We got to her house tonight, and I am so tired that I am only going to make a list of things we did, though I will try to include entertaining details.

1. We started out at the Visitor Center in Tupelo, where we saw some exhibits, touch deer skulls with antlers, and picked up a hitchhiker - an armadillo puppet named Sparkles who especially enjoys Native American historical sites and whom Livy taught to read a map all day long.

2. We hiked two sections of the Old Trace, the actual trail that the Kaintucks (that's Ohio Valley farmers who came down the river and hiked the trace home) walked along. We pretended we were Kaintucks, Chickasaw Indians, and even robbers (of which the Trace had its fair share). We wished we had horses so we could pretend to be mail riders.

3. We visited a Chickasaw Indain village, two more sets of mounds, and a house and barns circa 1840. We were excited to see a plow just like the one Almanzo would have used, harrow and all!

4. We did a nature trail through a cypress swamp, which was beautiful. I really wanted to see an alligator, but Livy was slightly terrified the whole time and was glad that we didn't. We didn't even see a turtle, but at different parts of the day, we saw cranes, hawks, and lots of horses.

5. We picnicked at a pretty overlook. It wasn't historical or interesting at all in that way, but we laid back on our blanket on the hill and had a delightful lunch of ham, cheese, veggies, hummus, and yogurt. Livy also ran up and down the hill about 48 times.

6. We watched the sun set over Ross Barnett Reservoir (very beautiful), and Livy threw about 600 sticks into the water.

7. We finished James and the Giant Peach and started Matilda (also by Roald Dahl).

I probably won't post until we are on the road again. We are going to spend 3 days here in Meridian and then head out again to do the rest of the Trace from Jackson to Natchez. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Great Trace Chase: Day 2

So, it's good to have a friend like Jenn, who can come up with good names. Our trip is renamed the Great Chase Trace, which is a better not only because it is shorter and catchier, but because it is a tongue twister! When we shout out the name when we crank the engine, it's so hard and funny to say. We have started saying it 4 times over every time.

Today, we spent the whole day on the Trace. The morning was rainy and yuck, and in order to keep our spirits up, I said, "We are the kind of people who are so much fun that rain cannot stop us. It cannot dare to suck up any of our fun." To which Livy replied, "What about locusts?" (Can you guess what books we really like?) And I said, "No, locusts would not dare come near us. We are that fun." Now, since I am the kind of person who intends not be upset by the rain but has bouts of self-pity when we are in it, and since Livy is the kind of person who is upset by it at the beginning but never thinks of it again once the rain is in her plan, I made our "locusts dare not approach us" saying, and she reminded me of it whenever it rained on us and I complained. :)

We had some of the best moments of our day in the rain. We hiked down to waterfall and climbed up the side to get a better look. We saw a house built in 1816 by the owner of a ferry, and we hiked down to see where he ran his ferry across the Duck River. I fell down in the mud, but I didn't mind because locusts dare not approach. After the rain stopped, mostly, we hiked a nature trail and skipped stones at Sweetwater Branch, saw where Meriweather Lewis died (some say murder, but most say suicide) and was buried, picnicked where the Colbert Ferry carried people across the TN river, climbed up Bear Creek Mound (Mississippian Indian temple mound and some Indians even earlier), explored a sinkhole/former cave and climbed all over the fallen-in ceiling rocks, and explored the Pharr Mounds.

The Pharr Mounds were a lot of fun, my favorite thing of the day. The rain had stopped; it was nearly dark; and we had the 90 acres to ourselves. We read the info about the mounds and walked out to three of the biggest. We ran up, ran down, and Livy rolled down like a log. She compared the heights of the two biggest by counting her steps. We thought we saw a deer on the top of one in the distance, but it was only a clump of tall white grass. :( We climbed up onto those big round hay bales and jumped from bale to bale. We ran with our eyes closed across the big open space. Basically, it was awesome sauce. Irreplaceable fun.

We had dinner, a bath, and now we are playing a version of Memory I made up with Choctaw word flashcards that came in her Junior Ranger book. We also managed to finish The Last Battle and start James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. Good day.