Friday March 28, 1997 – Vicksburg - Mississippi
The drive
from Shreveport to Vicksburg started off much later that we had
intended – although we heard a few trams coming through we slept until late and
then had to stop for petrol and breakfast. The meal was at a diner attached to
the gas station and was OK but no great shakes and a bit pricey. The waitron
and most of the patrons were huge! We shifted off the Interstate as soon as we
could and got onto a secondary road. At first the countryside was very pretty
with plenty of green pastures, trees and wisteria but it started getting
flatter and les interesting as the day wore on.
There was a
lot of water around – on both sides of the road and at times it seemed that it
was only because the roadway was raised which kept it from flooding. It was
something to cross the wide old Mississippi which was in full spate - it had
peaked the day before at the highest level for about thirty years.
The reason that we went to Vicksburg
was that it was said to have the greatest collection of ante-bellum houses in
the South and we thought they might be worth seeing. Well, maybe they are but
they don't look much from the outside, they are all bed and breakfast
establishments (which made us wonder how they could show people around at $5 a
head?) and a number were closed. Some were in pretty ropey parts of the town
too.
But we were pretty peckish, having
missed out on lunch, so on our way back from th last of the mansions, which
was, as it turned out, rebuilt in the 1940s and remodeled to look like
Tara from Gone With The Wind - some ante-bellum mansion! - we stopped off at a
very good restaurant which Rab had picked out from our Frommers. It was on a bluff above the river,
overlooking the bridge and had a very good atmosphere. The choice of food was
excellent to. And it as hard to make a choice between all the Suthern
specialities. My choice was perhaps not the wisest - catfish in a pecan nut
finish, which turned out to be very rich indeed. But it was good tucker all the
same. We saw the first of our Western sunsets here - spectacular.
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