Y’all, I am super stoked for today’s post—it’s the first one all about the road trip my friend Emma and I took over Labor Day Weekend! Since we covered so much ground, I am going to write a post about each place we stopped so that it’s not complete information overload. Once the other posts are up, I’ll link to them below so that it’s easy to navigate to each one:

• Natchez by way of Jackson, Mississippi (this post!)
• Oxford, Mississippi
• Birmingham by way of Tuscaloosa, Alabama
• Atlanta Georgia

We started our trip the Thursday night before Labor Day weekend and flew home the Tuesday after Labor Day. We spent a day in each location and I feel like the pace we planned our trip at was perfect—the longest stretch of driving we had to do was about four hours, but most days we drove two or three. It’s been a long time since I’ve done a good old fashioned road trip, and this one ended up being one of my favorite ones I’ve ever taken.

When I told people where I was going for LDW, I got a lot of blank stares since this part of the country is not a highly trafficked tourist destination from those in the DC area. But I’d always wanted to go to Mississippi and Alabama since I feel like it’s hard to understand the United States without understanding the American South. (Maybe that’s just the American Studies major in me!) Now having been, I would go in a heartbeat, and I hope my posts about the places we visited inspire other people to add this beautiful part of our country to their travel list.

Natchez, Mississippi was one of my favorite places we went on our trip and is now definitely one of my favorite places in the US. I learned about Natchez from my Grandmother, who loved reading about the antebellum mansions in Southern Living—but I found that when I mentioned Natchez in casual conversation, a lot of people weren’t as familiar. So I thought it’d be helpful to provide a little bit of context up front—Natchez, named for the Natchez tribe of Native Americans, is located right on the Mississippi River, directly across from Louisiana. It was a very prominent southern town before the Civil War, as many cotton and sugarcane planters owned houses in town—their tracts of farmland were located in the lowlands near the River. The proximity to the River made it a center of trade, and many of their products were taken down to New Orleans and exported to Europe.

Natchez is also the southern terminus of the Natchez Trace, the northern terminus being Nashville, Tennessee. The Natchez Trace is a historic forest trail that was created and used by Native Americans for centuries, and then later used by European and American explorers, traders, and planters. As steamboat trade expanded on the Mississippi River, the use of the Trace declined. Today, the 444-mile path is commemorated by a modern parkway that runs the historic route. We drove it for a part of our way to Oxford, and it was a beautiful drive!

Read more “24 Hours in Natchez, Mississippi”