To be honest, I'd never even heard of the Natchez Trace Parkway until I started planning our trip, and Tallie (queen of the 10-month road trip) told me it was a must visit. The Natchez Trace is the longest National Park, at 444 miles long. It's also suuuuper skinny. We didn't start at the beginning of the Trace, but instead hopped on just outside of Jackson, Mississippi. We had a long day of driving ahead of us (over 7 hours), but I'd done research ahead of time and planned out a number of different areas on the Trace where we could stop.
Our first stop was for a short .5 mile hike at Cypress Swamp. Occasionally they have alligators at this location, but we didn't see any. Boo!
Our next official stop was at the Natchez Trace Visitor's Center outside Tupelo, Mississippi. It took a long time, but the kids managed to complete another Jr Ranger booklet and earn another badge. We were super impressed with the video about the Trace. It's interesting how variation there is between each National Park.
After talking to the Ranger, we had a long list of additional, meaningful, potential stops, but by the time we got back on the road, we were already way behind "schedule." In order to get to our hotel and have dinner at a semi-reasonable time, we had to skip all future non-potty stops. That was disappointing, because we wanted to see more of the Trace, and I'd also hoped to get to Brentwood, Tennessee before 4 pm so we could catch a live taping of Dave Ramsey.
As it turned out, we still didn't make it to the hotel till almost 6 pm and very nearly had a potty emergency. Once we unloaded the van, Mark and Bryce hopped back in the van and went to a nearby grocery store to get chicken for dinner. Half of us ate on the floor again. It's a glamorous life we're leading. ;)
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