History, Landscapes and Memories

Natchez Trace  National Park. It is a highway that goes for 444 miles, it goes through Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi. It is a national park on its all and driving through it was just amazing. Once we were done with our trip on this highway we had taken a little taste of many of the landscapes that are waiting for us around USA. Plains, forests, swamps, hills, lakes and rivers were the main course of this part of our journey.

In our first stop we found a flag half way up, signal of the national mourning caused by the horrible killing in a elementary school in Connecticut. That same morning there was a national moment of silence in memory of the kids and teachers that were victims there.

At the same stop, our legs were asking for a stretch. We walked only one mile of the long trail that Lewis and Clark walked. What did we find? Not much, just a forest that seemed infinite and a lot of fresh air, which was needed.

The great Tennessee River!

That night we made it to Tupelo, Mississippi. There, we slept southern style, with family, music and stories.
The next morning we had the privilege of meeting a character that will be impossible to forget, Charlie. A man that is eighty something years old and history is in his blood. He is known as the John Deer Man, he has collections of anything that has the John Deer stamp on it. The most incredible thing about him, is his skill to restore old, rusted and consumed by time trucks and make of them a master piece for museums and collections.
During a couple hours Charlie let his memories show through his eyes and shared them in detail, without any doubt, it was an honor to meet him.

Later on, we went to gather some water from a spring. It was something really exciting for the boys to see a natural source of water. For me, it was just a moment to remember my childhood at my family's camping house, we used to walk to a little forest next to the house and I was the first one to run and check that the four springs were clean and full of water... Great memories!

We continued our trip down to Texas on the same highway, where we found a bunch of fake landscapes, the ones you find only on postcards and National Geographic magazines. Above, it is a historic site, along the trace there are mounds made by the native people that lived in the area a long time ago to honor their ancestors.

Later on, we had the chance of hiking for 30 minutes in a real swamp, one of those that has real crocodiles and water and mud and all those cool things that are real and make a real swamp!

Finally, we went through the Ross R Bammet Reservoir just in time to see the sunset. I was driving and as soon as I saw that scene coming from behind the trees I had to pull over to enjoy the moment and save it on my camera.

We spent hours going down on Natchez Trace National Park, but it was worth it to stop on each site to enjoy the landscapes that we saw for almost 380 miles!