Sound bite: Along the southern stretch of the Mississippi River between Vicksburg, Miss., and New Orleans, La., you'll find dozens of historic sugar plantation estates--mansions of grand design that were once surrounded by fields of indigo, cotton, and sugar cane. In Natchez, Miss., we tour one of these homes. Longwood's story is particularly interesting because the estate was half-finished when the Civil War broke out. In 1861, the construction workers dropped their tools and fled North, leaving behind an elegant octagonal home with an unfinished interior. If you tour today, you can see the same tools right where workers left them--it's as if time stopped.
Addie McLemore is our tour guide. She is a hostess for the Natchez Garden Club that maintains many of the town's plantation homes.
High point of the day: Face painting, snow cones, a band playing patriotic songs, fireworks shot from a barge in the middle of the Mississippi, and World War II jet planes "attacking" a destroyer ship--Baton Rouge goes all out at their Fourth of July festival that takes over the riverfront.
Low point of the day: It's 5 p.m. and it must be 100 degrees outside because we're tempted to take off our clothes and jump in the river. Probably not the best idea during Baton Rouge's Fourth of July festival that attracts some 100,000 people. So instead we join others who are cooling off by sticking their feet in a fountain. It's not long before our kids are swimming in the fountain--and that's when the cops arrive. Busted!
Photo of the day: Mark Twain called Baton Rouge's Old State Capitol a "monstrosity," but my kids refer to the Gothic Revival building overlooking the river as a castle. "A princess must live there," my daughter says. The state house remained in use until 1932 and it's now a museum with exhibits detailing the voting process, the assassination of former governor Huey Long, and the statehood and history of Louisiana.
Miles: 90
Total miles: 2429
Hours in the car: 2
Total hours in the car: 50
Weather: The thermometer officially reads 100 degrees.
Expenses
- Hotel: $85 (Best Western River Inn; brand-new property overlooking the Mississippi)
- Breakfast: free at hotel
- Admission: $28 (Longwood)
- Lunch: $20 (Biscuits & Blues in Natchez)
- Dinner: $17.50 Total for the day: $150.50
Total for the trip: $2226.63
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