Natchez Trace, Day 1

Thursday morning found us back on I-40, driving due east.  I don’t think I have ever seen so many trucks on the road!  I started counting, and I think the ratio was pretty close to ten trucks for every one car.

I may have mentioned it before, but a Mini Cooper is a very small car.  It is a lot of fun on some of the roads we have traveled on this trip, but not much fun when jockeying around tractor-trailers.

We crossed the Mississippi River in Memphis, and for the first time in many weeks were back in the Eastern United States.  In honor of John Lee Hooker, I found some of his music on YouTube and we entertained ourselves listening to the great blues man singing “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” and many other Memphis Blues classics.

 

Finally, we arrived at our destination and our accommodation for the next two nights, Natchez Trace State Park.  The park has been around for a long time and is not very far away from Highlands, but we have never visited it before. 

 

Before we checked in at the Park, we drove into nearby Lexington, Tennessee, where we hoped we might be able to find some supplies.  We were staying in a cabin with a full kitchen and needed to stock it up just a little, so we stopped in The Food Giant, apparently the only grocery store in Lexington.  Immediately, we realized that we were back in the South again, where shopping carts are called “buggies” and groceries are placed not in bags but in “sacks.”  I realized that we stood out as tourists, just as much as visitors to Highlands do, in our traveling clothes and emerging from a convertible sports car.  I was walking down one aisle when an older woman stocking shelves asked me, “Do you have change for a penny?”  Ha!  I love places like this.  At the checkout counter, a man asked me, “Where are you from?”  and as quickly as I could I replied, “Where do you think I’m from?”  We enjoyed some good-natured banter and learned that in Lexington, Tennessee, North Carolina was an acceptable place to come from.  Yes, we were back in the South.

 

We drove into the Park and found our little cabin, right on the shores of a pretty little lake, Cub Creek Lake.  We had come 6,875 miles so far.

 

North Little Rock

Wednesday morning, after a nice healthy breakfast prepared by our hostess at the Monastery (including a delicious yogurt parfait), we found ourselves almost immediately in interstate traffic.  The route to Little Rock, our next destination, could really not be reached any other way than via I-40, five hours of it.  Very tedious driving.

 

I tried to entertain us by playing music from YouTube on the sound system through my iPhone, which five weeks on the road had enabled me to master.  There were no small towns and no murals.  We arrived in North Little Rock, and I realized that while these last two days of driving had made the road trip less entertaining, Martha had tried to at least make our accommodations interesting.  Our hotel for the night was The Baker, an 1896 Victorian home on a quiet side street near little bistros and restaurants.
 

The house had a round turret, and that is where we were staying.  I don’t think I have ever stayed in a turret before.  We wandered through the house, which was equipped with a modern kitchen, but otherwise furnished with Victorian-era chairs and sofas.  I always admire beautiful workmanship, and the carpenters who had completed this house 127 years ago were the very best.  We climbed the narrow winding steps to the second floor, and then the even narrower steps to the turret room – all 36 of them.
 

Our bedroom was just remarkable.  As someone who has done a bit of carpentry, I had nothing but admiration for the perfect curved base moldings and wainscoting in the master bedroom.
 

We explored the area near The Baker, and decided that after weeks of salads, light Mexican fare, and the like, we were ready for some comforting Italian food, so we sat in the window seat at Ristorante Capeo just a block away and enjoyed one of our best dinners on our road trip.

Oklahoma City

As I said in my previous post, this part of our road trip was not as enjoyable as some of the more spectacular places we visited.  It was hot - close to ninety degrees - and humid, conditions we had not experienced at all out west.  Once again we kept seeing depressing sights in this desolate, flat country:  abandoned buildings, abandoned towns, abandoned hopes.

 

There were fields full of cattle, though, and more than anywhere else we had seen, windmills everywhere, hundreds of them slowly somersaulting, reaping the power of the wind.

 

We arrived in Oklahoma City late in the afternoon and made our way through city traffic to the Bricktown area, where we had stayed on our trip through here in 2016.  I remembered an early-morning run along the canal at the time, but it sounded like the area had gotten even better since then:

 

“Industrial-chic Bricktown is a lively entertainment district, with repurposed warehouse spaces home to restaurants, piano lounges, and chic wine bars. An eclectic mix of shops sell clothing, home décor, and specialty food items like gourmet condiments and handmade chocolate. The Bricktown Water Taxi takes riders along the Bricktown Canal for tours and dinner cruises.”

 

The Water Taxi sounded like fun.  We had a light dinner at an outside table at the Bourbon Street Café, which was right on the canal.

 

Then we found the Water Taxi.  The young lady steering the taxi took us along the canal and talked a little about what we were seeing and the revitalization of the city in recent years.  

 

I remembered the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and the devastation it had caused to the city.  It was the deadliest act of terrorism in the country until the September 11 attacks in 2001.  It had killed 168 people, injured 680, and destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a 16-block radius, shattered glass in 258 buildings, and destroyed 86 cars, causing an estimated $652 million worth of damage.  Oklahoma City really was a success story, a Phoenix reborn from the ashes of that terrible day.

 

Our pilot was very entertaining, and toward the end of the cruise she played that famous song from the Oscar Hammerstein musical:

 

“Ooooooo-klahoma,
Where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain
And the wavin' wheat
Can sure smell sweet
When the wind comes right behind the rain.”

 

Our hotel for the night was one of the most interesting ones on this road trip, the Monastery at Forest Lake, a former monastery converted years ago to a bed and breakfast and located in a rambling building on the shores of a small lake. 

 

There were deer grazing on the opposite shore and ducks paddling out in the water.  It was as peaceful as one imagines a monastery should be. 

 

We found out from the owner, sadly, that we would be the last guests ever to stay in this bed and breakfast.  It had been converted to an Airbnb, and there was already remodeling and painting underway.  Had we not made our reservation months ago, we would not have been able to stay there.  There was a kitchen and a big living room just outside our room, and a game room with a full-size pool table (we played a few games).  And except for the owners, we had the place all to ourselves.

 

Pike's Peak

There are several ways to reach the summit of Pike’s Peak.  You can hike (the most popular trail is the Barr Trail), which consists of 13.5 miles uphill (Difficulty Rating:  Hard) and can be completed in six to 10 hours.  You can ride a bike via the 19.5 mile Pike’s Peak Highway.  You can drive on said highway, an option that some of our friends have told us about; like the Million Dollar Highway to Ouray, there are few guardrails, and we were told there is a mandatory stop halfway down to make sure your brakes are not burning up.  Or you can take the remarkable Cog Railway:

“The Pikes Peak Cog Railway is the oldest mobile route to the summit of America’s Mountain. Construction began on the famous route in 1889 and the first tourists made it to the summit in 1891. The route begins in Manitou Springs and ascends nine miles, traveling through Pike National Forest and past historic landmarks. Your ride includes interesting facts on the local flora and fauna, historic points of interest and a 40-minute stop at the summit to allow you time to take pictures, stretch your legs and try out the hot, fresh donuts that are cranked out daily.”

We decided to give our little Mini (and its drivers) a rest and take the Cog Railway, and we were glad we did.  The Cliff House was only one mile from the terminal and we made an early start for seats that, once again, Martha had reserved months ago.  The area around our hotel in Manitou Springs looked like an interesting place to explore, with little bistros and shops lining the steep, narrow streets.  We arrived at the terminal in time and boarded the train; our seats were in the very front so that we had an unimpeded view of the climb (and the backward descent on the way down).  There were signs posted in the terminal warning about altitude sickness, something we had not experienced thus far despite being at altitudes above 10,000 feet, and I wondered if it would affect us.

 

We began to climb slowly upward, while the conductor told us all about the scenery we were seeing alongside the train as we ascended the second most visited peak in the world after Japan’s Mount Fuji. 

The grade was 25%, which meant that the front car in the 200-foot train, where we were sitting, was four stories higher than the rear car.  He also told us that the song “America the Beautiful” was inspired by the mountain.  It is based on a poem written by the professor, poet, and writer Katharine Lee Bates during an 1893 trip to Colorado Springs; when she reached the summit, the view was so beautiful that it inspired her to write, "All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse."

 

This was a good way to see the mountain, we realized, rather than out on the curving road to the summit with its many switchbacks.  We passed roaring mountain streams, and then were able to see spectacular views as we rose above the tree line.

 

The views at the summit were exceptional.  We were actually looking down on clouds in one direction.  Our conductor gave us an exact time to meet back for the ride down.  He stressed that if we failed to arrive on time, we would be hiking back down the mountain and might arrive at the base before dark. 

 

I had been running a mile or two off and on during this road trip and considered myself to be pretty fit.  But even I experienced the effects of 14,115 feet.  I was out of breath and actually felt a little faint, and I was not alone.  We read on a sign in the Visitors Center that the available oxygen here, compared to 100% at sea level, was only 60%.  After taking photos and exploring the summit, we went inside to find out about the famous doughnuts.  We are not big doughnut eaters these day, but of course we had to try them, just as one tries fish and chips in London.  It is said that the recipe is a secret one, and employees must sign a confidentiality agreement to ensure the recipe doesn’t leave the property.  It is the altitude that makes them so light and fluffy, though.  “The doughnuts are only good at the top of Pikes Peak; bring them down the mountain and they turn into doughnut pudding.”  I thought that would be an interesting experiment to try, but alas there were no doughnuts to take back down the mountain with us.

 

We arrived back at the railway on time and rode backward down the mountain, had a light picnic lunch at a table across from the depot, and got on the road again.  Hikers and runners kept going by, many of them taking the trail to the summit though likely not completing the entire climb. 

 

From Manitou Springs we continued east into Kansas.  It was flat country and not very exciting to drive through after all that we had seen on this road trip thus far.  Here we noted again the poverty of small towns, abandoned houses, boarded-up businesses in the nearly-empty towns we passed through.  After several hours, we arrived in Garden City, Kansas, and our hotel for the night - elevation a mere 2,828.