2005/04 Deep South trip - Rocky Spring |
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Sunday April 10th
Nobody was moving early at the campground. The Quebecers seem to take their time traveling along their migration route. We spent breakfast time writing postcards, and we set off about 11, continuing south along the parkway. We came to the village of French Camp, surprising as we’d only seen distant farms up till then and this was only a few yards off the parkway. It was named after a “stand” that was operated by a Frenchman. There’s a tiny church school there that’s still in operation. We pulled off at the café with thoughts of cappuccinos but it turned out that everybody in the parking lot was there to go to the church next door and that the café was closed on Sundays.
We stopped along the parkway to walk a number of nature trails, noting that the vegetation was 
changing as we moved south, with more and heavier leafage, and more swamps with tupelos and cypress trees. At one of these, we saw three small ‘gators, even though the sign said that they were “rarely” resident there. We were also finding the occasional mosquito, a sign of summer.
At the next picnic spot we pulled off to look at the masses of blue flowers, and I realized that I was missing a camera lens. I didn’t find it amongst the flowers, so I drove 10 miles back to the swamp and ‘gators to see if I’d dropped it there, while Sandie stayed and continued searching. Luckily she found it for me, but we’d wasted an hour looking, so it was nearly dark when we got to the Trace’s last free campground at Rocky Spring. The sign outside said “full”, but we managed to find a spot amongst the Quebecers. It was a very warm, steamy evening, and there were lots of generators going, feeding the air conditioners.
Earlier that evening, we’d had to get off the parkway for about seventeen miles near Jackson, as that part isn’t open yet. The grand opening is next month, when the whole 450 miles is supposed to be usable, after twenty years of work.
Monday April 11th
We hiked up to Rocky Spring to see what was left of the town: very little, just two safes and a well. Everything else from the town of 2500 people had rotted away. The combination of Civil War, yellow fever, and the boll weevil that attacks cotton were just too much for them, and the town died. Even the spring after which the town was named had dried up. The trail followed a part of the original Natchez Trace, now a deep trench in the hillside, worn down by all those feet. Back at the campground we were in the minority again. There were just the Quebecers and us.